A Single Shifting Leaf
by Zoe Walker
Summary: My first completed fanfic. Pretty much a by-the-numbers guide in what not to do, but I learned a lot writing it. Just go read Reflections of Exile instead. It's in the same fandom, and so much better.
1. Uzumaki Naruto!

**Before I start, I'd like to get a few things out of the way. First off, this is not a Zoe Walker story. If she is involved at all, it will be in a few subtle references, maybe a short cameo. This is a Naruto story first and foremost. Secondly, this is an AU story in which a single altered detail changes the whole story. No, I will not tell you what is different. You will have to figure that out for yourself. That's part of the fun. Finally, the continuity errors, moments of utter illogic, and irrational hatred of strong female characters and the laws of physics demonstrated in the canon plot have been removed as much as possible. I love Naruto. I really do. Perhaps that is why it took me over ten years to notice these things. So, characters will not be going out of character because the author doesn't know what the character's personality is going to be, unless it is because of the thing I changed. The laws of physics will apply when chakra is not involved, and when chakra is involved physics will still try to work right within the bounds of what is happening. Characters will not develop powers as the plot demands, but they can still learn new techniques and discover new powers. They just won't be stupid enough to use an untested move in the middle of a fight to the death unless they are really desperate, and if they do it will probably end poorly for them. Female characters other than Tsunade and Konan will be allowed to be powerful and scale with male characters. [Spoiler: Obito does not transplant Uchiha Madara's Rinnegan into Nagato the year that Obito was born in this story. In fact, in this story Uchiha Madara doesn't have the Rinnegan at all. He is plenty scary and manipulative without giving him god mode. Is it Madara behind the Tobi mask? Is it someone else? Does Tobi even exist in this world? Wouldn't you like to know? Heh heh heh.] All names, characters, world, etc are the property of Kishimoto, but this particular storyline, any OCs, and Zoe Walker are all mine. I will use English words when possible, unless the Japanese name for a jutsu sounds really, really cool. However, I will be putting the characters' last names before their first names. After reading the official Shonen Jump manga translations for years, to do the names the other way just feels strange.**

For as long as humans have recorded history has existed a great monster, the nine-tailed demon fox. A natural disaster given living form, its footfalls caused earthquakes and widespread destruction. When it swung its tails volcanoes would erupt, hurricanes would brew, and mountains would crumble into dust. In its most recent rampage, the fox attacked Konohagakure, the village hidden in the leaves, home to some of the finest ninja in the world. Although many lives were lost that day, at the end of the battle two great ninja sacrificed their lives to defeat the demon, and seal it away inside a newborn baby. They were the Fourth Hokage, and his predecessor the Third, the leaders of the village. The demon was vanquished that night, but only at great cost.

Eleven years later, Konoha (as its residents preferred to call the village. The other names are something of a mouthful) had seemingly recovered entirely from being trampled by a twenty story fox demon. The outer wall had been rebuilt, and gleamed seamlessly in the afternoon sun. Inside the walls, homes, businesses, and the military facilities used by the village's ninja forces jumbled together like a toddler's proud building block project. Konoha might be renowned for powerful ninja, but it had never produced a stand-out urban planner. Five massive faces cast shadows on the mountains overlooking the village, carved busts of the previous and current Hokage, sternly watching over the village even after death. Anyone in the village had only to look up to see the history of Konoha displayed for all to see, as a young Chunin (Journeyman ninja. Lower than an elite Jonin in rank but higher ranking than a novice Genin) did. He gazed out the window of the Konoha Ninja Academy, where he was teaching a class. The Chunin had short, dark hair and a tan, and was dressed in the traditional uniform of Konoha: dark pants, dark shirt, utility belt and holster, and a dark green flak jacket. His only real distinguishing feature was a scar across the bridge of his nose. He started to motion to his class to gaze out the window, providing a supplement to the history lesson he was giving, and then did a double take. Next to the stern, cyclopean gaze of the Fifth Hokage had been painted a sixth wobbly face. The face was round, and would have been wholly unrecognizable as even human without the whisker-like lines on each cheek and the words painted across its forehead. The label read, if you looked at it sideways and squinted just right, "Uzumaki Naruto: Sixth Hokage!" The Chunin turned back to his class, desperately searching for a familiar face which was now conspicuous in its absence. Another adult ninja, a thin, young man with silver hair, pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. He was dressed nearly identically to the first man, except that he had a pair of massive, manhole-cover-sized shuriken slung across his back.

"Go and get him, Iruka," the silver haired man told his teaching partner, "I'll hold down the fort here." He turned toward the students, who had clustered by the window to admire Naruto's handiwork. "Oi, you lot! Since you are obviously confident about history, we'll have a pop quiz on ninjutsu instead. The Art of Transformation! To pass, you gotta make yourselves look exactly like me. Let's go, y'all!" The students groaned as one, and plodded pack to their seats, muttering in annoyance and occasionally despair. Iruka, meanwhile, was already racing out the door.

"Thanks for covering for me, Mizuki," Iruka said gratefully as he raced out of the classroom, nearly slamming into the hallway wall outside before taking off at speeds no untrained human could hope to match. Channeling his Chakra, magical energies harnessed by ninja and sometimes samurai through intense training of body, mind, and spirit, the teacher forced power into his legs and rocketed out a conveniently open window. Leaping forward, he bounced off several roofs, and slid to a stop on a balcony just below the Hokage monument. He took a deep breath in, channeled a little chakra to his lungs (a handy voice-amplifying trick that was invaluable for any teacher), and shouted his displeasure at the top of his lungs. "UZUMAKI NARUTO! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" Up on the mountain, Iruka could see a tiny speck of orange swinging about on the end of a rope in panicked flailing. Faint shouting, hard to understand without the chakra that had enhanced Iruka's yell, filtered back down from the speck.

"Crap, Crap, Crap!" shouted Naruto, trying to restore his balance on the mountain to pull himself up and escape, "It's Iruka-sensei! I'm screwed!" Before the boy could do anything to escape, Iruka had jumped over to the mountain, run up the sheer face to reach his wayward student, and grabbed Naruto by the scruff of the neck, severing the boy's rope with a kunai knife. He was still standing on the vertical surface, held fast by a minor application of chakra. The boy and the teacher glared at each other, snorting. Both were far too stubborn to back down.

Iruka cooled down enough to talk first. "What were you thinking, Naruto," he asked in a more reasonable tone of voice, "The graduation exam happens tomorrow. You've already failed twice. If you fail again, you'll be shunted into the Genin corps. There's nothing wrong with the Corps, but you'll never become the Hokage in a position like that. I can count on one hand the number of people I know who were in the Corps and made Chunin! Is that what you want? Huh?" The teacher glared at the bundle of blonde hair and orange-and-black striped clothing he was holding at arm's length, the student inside tangled in his own safety rope. The student glared back with piercing blue eyes.

"Hah!" Naruto blustered with a huge grin, "You're just jealous that you don't have the guts to do something like this! You're nothing compared to me, 'cause I'm gonna be Hokage someday dattebayo! I'm gonna show the villagers that I'm not just some monster in a Naruto suit, and earn their respect! I know I'm not really the fox. Old man Hokage said so!" The last sentences were said as though Naruto was trying to convince himself of their truthfulness. Iruka responded with a grin.

"Well, no matter what anyone else says, I'm certain you aren't really the nine-tailed fox," Iruka stated with a chuckle, "I'm sure that if the fox shared your… artistic sensibilities it would have drawn great masterworks of art in the wreckage of the village. People would come from miles around to see wobbly self-portraits in the rubble. I think that Lord Hokage will forgive you this… masterpiece one last time, but you have to understand, Naruto." The Chunin's expression turned deadly serious, "Whether you graduate or not, after tomorrow, you will be an adult, and a ninja of Konoha. From that point on, stuff like this isn't harmless fun; you'll be fined or sent to prison." When Naruto went pale and gulped like a landed fish, Iruka knew he'd gotten the point across and smiled again, "but I think that the Hokage will forgive you this time, as long as you clean it up. I'm not going to let you go home until all the paint is gone."

"Don't worry, sensei," Naruto explained, "I used special paint like from the academy obstacle course. It washes off with water. Next time it rains, everything will come right off!"

"That doesn't make the paint go away right after school," Iruka said smugly, "You don't get out of this that easy. And, for trying to weasel out of it, you'll have to do it without a rope. Consider it a chakra control exercise. The Kami know you could use the practice." Naruto slumped in dejection, although the effect was somewhat lessened by the way he dangled from Iruka's hand, still covered in paint. The kid still looked pretty pathetic, and Iruka felt sorry for his student. He really wanted Naruto to pass, and sympathized with Naruto's plight. Naruto was not the first student to struggle in the academy. Many years ago, Iruka had been in a nearly identical situation to his student's. What had happened on that day had changed the Chunin's life. Maybe he could do the same for Naruto. "But," the teacher concluded, "If you can get it done in time, I suppose I could… I'll treat you to a bowl of ramen."

Naruto immediately perked up. It was like looking at a totally different person. Iruka could practically see stars in his eyes. The student wiggled out of Iruka's grasp and clung to the monument like a limpet. He then proceeded to shoot off toward the top of the monument, screaming "Ramen-Ramen-Ramen!" over and over like some sort of religious mantra. Iruka couldn't help snicker at the sight and sound, and then shook his head. It wasn't that funny. His blood must have been pooling in strange places from standing sideways for so long. Yeah. That was it. Iruka considered calling Naruto back, or dragging him into class for the rest of the day, but decided against it. There was only half an hour left in the day, and he estimated that Mizuki's 'pop quiz' would take up the rest of the time. He knew that the quiz wasn't graded; it was just to take up time and see where the students were with their ninjutsu. Besides, it wasn't every day that one managed to motivate Naruto to do something constructive. Supervision was probably a good idea.

True to form, when properly motivated Naruto could move mountains. His seemingly boundless energy and chakra reserves allowed him to stay on the wall long after any other student would have passed out from strain or chakra exhaustion. He was able to scrub the paint off with two hours of frenzied labor, all the while rambling happily about ramen. Iruka figured there were plenty of less healthy things Naruto could obsess about. Uchiha Sasuke and the small army of stalkers he had attracted came to mind. The poor boy still hadn't discovered why his dirty laundry kept disappearing. He needed to work on his observation skills. Being the valedictorian should not invite complacency. And as an Uchiha, lacking in said skills was just embarrassing.

Once all the paint was gone, and the sun was starting to set, Iruka and Naruto went to Ichiraku's Ramen, widely regarded as the best ramen stand in the village. Since Naruto had finished cleaning quickly, they even beat the dinner rush. Over ramen, Iruka gave Naruto pointers for the practical portion of the graduation exam. Both teacher and student knew that the academic section was a lost cause at this point, but if Naruto could score well on the practical aspects he could pass anyway. They were weighted more heavily, because the practical skills were what kept a ninja alive in the field. As they talked, Iruka had two bowls, and bought Naruto three more. Once Iruka cut Naruto off, the boy bought another fifteen bowls for himself. Fifteen! Where was he putting it all? Having seen Naruto eat in the past, Iruka concluded that the seal on the boy's stomach must include a storage seal just to make all the food fit. Thinking about the seal made Iruka sigh in sympathy for his student. Most ninja had some understanding of how sealing techniques worked, even if few ever became sealing masters. The ninja of the village understood that Naruto and the nine-tailed fox demon sealed inside him were two separate individuals. They did their best to treat Naruto like a normal kid, even if they got a little jumpy when the student made sudden movements. Civilians, however, had no such knowledge to draw comfort from. Most of them, and a vocal minority of the village's ninja, were convinced that Naruto was the demon confined in human form, and often tried to take out their grief and fear from the demon's attack on its container. Naruto didn't deserve that. He really was a good kid. He was just clumsy, socially awkward (because his condition made most people really nervous so he didn't have a lot of close friends), and had way too much energy for his own good. Even with the strongest ADHD meds the medic ninja could create and extra lessons to help the boy conquer his dyslexia, Naruto had trouble focusing. When he lost focus, he got bored, and usually tried to escape for one of his pranks. However, Iruka and the other teachers figured that once Naruto graduated the thrill of going on missions and learning new skills would keep him occupied.

Late at night, well after almost all the other customers had left, Iruka and Naruto said their goodbyes, with Naruto finishing his last bowl, and the two headed for home. The next morning, Naruto woke up early to make sure that he made it to the exam on time. He usually didn't put much effort into being punctual, but this was important dattebayo! He ate three packages of instant ramen and an apple from the basket of fruits and vegetables that Iruka regularly forced on him, and reluctantly threw away his carton of milk. Naruto would have liked milk with breakfast, but the drink smelled spoiled. When he reached the academy, Naruto was surprised to find that he was one of the first people there. He really was early! Only two other people were in the classroom already. Naruto slipped into the back, and considered his classmates. Nara Shikamaru, a lazy boy with dark hair shaped like a pineapple, was napping on his desk in the center of the room. Naruto suspected that Shikamaru could have been at the top of the class if he had put any effort in at all, since the Nara boy slept through all his classes and was still passing by a wide margin. The room's other occupant was the boy who was at the top of the class: Uchiha Sasuke. Naruto and Sasuke had never gotten along. On the surface, this seemed a little strange. Both of them were very isolated orphans. Naruto had lost both his parents in the demon fox's attack, the same attack that had left the demon sealed inside him and most of the villagers hating him. Sasuke had lost his entire family four years ago, when his genius older brother Itachi had snapped and slaughtered everyone in the clan compound. Sasuke had been out practicing in the woods, and hadn't even know what had happened until he saw a house explode and rushed back to find his brother standing over the corpses of his parents and the elite ANBU ninja who had tried to stop him. After exchanging words, Itachi had tortured his brother with a genjutsu (illusion technique) and fled for parts unknown. Practically the only thing that the traumatized boy would talk about was how someday he was going to kill his brother and restore the honor of his clan. Since Naruto wanted to be friends (he always wanted to be friends), and Sasuke wanted to be left alone to brood, the two mixed like oil and water. It didn't help that as valedictorian and the last loyal member of the prestigious Uchiha clan Sasuke was the love interest of nearly all the girls in the class. They fawned over him. They stalked him. They stole his dirty laundry and built shrines to him in their closets. Neither Naruto nor Sasuke had figured out exactly how creepy the fangirls had gotten, though. Naruto knew that Sasuke had attracted all the girls, including Naruto's crush. Sasuke knew that he wanted nothing to do with the annoying fangirls or the even more annoying Naruto. The result was an epically one-sided rivalry. Naruto constantly tried to outdo Sasuke, and Sasuke ignored Naruto.

While Naruto glared at Sasuke, the rest of the class filtered in. As usual, the girls clustered around Sasuke, while the boys spread out around the room. This included Haruno Sakura, the girl that Naruto was certain was his one true love. He didn't know anything about her other than that she had pink hair, was pretty, and hated him. However, this hadn't blunted the demon vessel's enthusiasm at all.

While Naruto alternated glaring at Sasuke and drooling over Sakura, two people, Naruto's closest friends, sat down on either side of him. On his right was Inuzuka Kiba, the self-proclaimed class wild-man. The boy had fang-shaped tattoos on both cheeks, and feral yellow eyes. He wore a hooded jacket over light metal body armor. His dog, Akamaru, sat atop his messy, dark hair. The Inuzuka clan were renowned for their partnership with their ninja dogs, making them some of the best trackers and scouts in the world. Someday, Akamaru would be Kiba's partner in battle and all forms of missions, but he was still a puppy and spent most of his time eating, sleeping, and helping Kiba and Naruto pull off pranks. On Naruto's left sat the only girl in the class who didn't fawn over Sasuke, Hyuga Hinata. The Hyuga clan was the most prestigious and powerful clan in Konoha, and with the Uchiha mostly dead or defected the Hyuga didn't even have competition for the title. The Hyuga were renowned for their martial arts and the Byakugan, a unique ocular ninjutsu that only someone with Hyuga blood can awaken. The Byakugan, the all-seeing eye, grants 360 degree, full-spectrum vision and the ability to see chakra and through solid objects. The Hyuga martial art, Gentle Fist, takes advantage of this and the superb chakra control that all Hyuga have to use chakra to attack their foes' organs and chakra circulatory system directly. One scratch can be fatal. This powerful style was the reason that even Sasuke was below Hinata in rankings for Taijutsu (ninja unarmed combat). Hinata had the usual Hyuga looks. Her hair was blacker than a moonless night, and her skin was very pale. Her eyes shone silver and did not have visible pupils, the hallmarks of a Byakugan ready to be used. Despite her skills and lineage, Hinata was distinguished from the rest of her clan by not being an arrogant and abrasive person. In fact, she was painfully shy, and as in love with Naruto as the most devoted of Sasuke's fangirls were with him. Hinata in fact stalked Naruto, although she had never worked up the courage to steal his clothes or spy on him with the Byakugan. Just sitting next to him was enough to make her flush bright red and feel light-headed. However, Naruto was oblivious to her affections, having eyes only for Sakura. Everyone who cared knew that Hinata loved Naruto, except for Naruto himself, and several betting pools were devoted to the question of when the oblivious boy would find out.

Having a last name that started with the letters Uz meant that Naruto was the last person called to take his practical exam, and having sweated through the written portion, Naruto was forced to watch as the classroom slowly emptied. Even the seemingly imperturbable Naruto was feeling his nerves. Finally, Naruto's name was called, and he dashed down the steps and ran into the examination room in a burst of nervous energy. "Uzumaki Naruto, here and ready to pass dattebayo!" As he had come to expect from his previous exam attempts, three people were overseeing the exam. Mizuki and Iruka of course, and also the Hokage himself. The Hokage always sat in on the examinations to pick out promising students for ANBU, the hospital, and other special positions. His single eye swept over Naruto in resignation, as though he already expected Naruto to fail, and his hands twitched under his robes of state. The Hokage's right side was, as usual, swathed in bandages and Naruto wondered, not for the first time, what was concealed underneath. However, he didn't have time to dwell on the mystery, as the teachers put him through his paces. First, he had to spar with Mizuki, using only taijutsu. Then, he had to strike different targets throughout the room by throwing shuriken and kunai knives. After that, he had to break a low-level genjutsu. Finally, he had to demonstrate his proficiency in the academy's basic ninjutsu. Naruto was able to use the art of transformation with ease, making himself look exactly like Iruka and hold it for the required minute. When targeted with a thrown eraser, Naruto was able to use the art of substitution to switch himself with a nearby textbook, causing the projectile to strike the textbook instead. But, the third and final test was in the art of the doppelganger. This technique used chakra to create insubstantial duplicates of the user, and Naruto sucked at it. He could not create a convincing one, and no matter how much he practiced he never seemed to improve. Still, he reasoned, there is nothing like game-day pressure. Naruto made the hand signs needed to use the technique, pumped chakra through them, and… it fizzled, leaving behind a single clone that looked like it was made from play-doh. Naruto needed three convincing clones to pass.

"I'm sorry, Naruto," Iruka stated with finality. He didn't want to fail Naruto, but he didn't have a choice. "I can't let you pass without being able to use the art of the doppelganger. You fail." Naruto hung his head, and started to walk out when a different voice spoke behind him.

"Wait," ordered the Hokage in his gravelly voice, leaning forward. He looked like he was swallowing something bitter, but carried on, "Try that jutsu again." The teachers looked at him, startled, but didn't question the Hokage. His word was law. Shrugging in puzzlement, Naruto tried the technique a second time, and this time he didn't even manage a single clone, just a lot of smoke. However, whatever had happened had apparently confirmed something in the Hokage's mind, because he spoke again. "Just as I suspected."

"What is it?" asked Naruto nervously, "Is something wrong with me? Am I going to die?! I don't want to die dattebayo!"

Upon hearing Naruto's verbal tic, the Hokage twitched as though reminded of something foul, but he reluctantly explained his thoughts. "Everyone dies someday. However, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with your jutsu. You are simply using too much chakra for it. The excess power overloads the technique, and makes it fizzle. Considering your… unique condition it is doubtful that you will ever be able to use the art of the doppelganger."

"So then what do I do?" asked Naruto, "I need that jutsu to pass, right?"

"Not necessarily," replied the Hokage. His grimace grew more pronounced. "Since you are physically incapable of completing this test, I will waive the requirement that you demonstrate proficiency in the art of the doppelganger provided you learn an alternative doppelganger technique from your jonin sensei before you start doing combat missions." He appeared to have finally swallowed his bitter pill. Naruto, however, was ecstatic. He went to hug the Hokage, then decided better of it. Instead, the new genin pumped his leader's hand vigorously, shaking the older man about in his chair and babbling about how he wouldn't let the Hokage or the village down, and he was a ninja dattebayo! The Hokage was less than pleased about the physical contact, but soon enough Naruto was sent out of the room with a Konoha armored headband, the mark of a ninja of the village. He went with stern instructions to report back to the academy the next day to be assigned his jonin sensei, but Iruka wasn't sure that Naruto had been paying attention. The teacher resolved to check in with Naruto later as he and Mizuki left the room. The Hokage, meanwhile, took off his distinctive square hat and rubbed his temples. Naruto reminded him so much of the boy's mother. They caused similar headaches. It was definitely for the best that they had never met. Konoha would never fall, not while he, Shimura Danzo, the Fifth Hokage was in charge. If two Uzumaki, and he shuddered at the nightmarish concept, were running around not even the legendary First Hokage could have saved the village from them.


	2. The Journey Begins

As it had been the previous day, the Konoha Ninja Academy was packed with people. But, unlike the previous day, these were not students. That day, those here now had passed their graduation exam. Yesterday, they might have been students, but today, they were ninja. And Uzumaki Naruto was pretty happy about that.

Seated with his friends in their usual place in the back of the room he fidgeted with his new Konoha armored headband while giggling and totally ignoring Iruka's graduation speech. The protective garment, emblazoned with the spiraling leaf that serves as Konohagakure's symbol, marked Naruto as a ninja and adult of the village. As far as the young Uzumaki was concerned, there was nothing more valuable in the world. He tuned back in to his former teacher's words as Iruka began to list the Genin teams and their supervising Jonin-sensei. Naruto was eager to get stronger, since the Hokage is, as far as he knew, always the strongest ninja in the village. He figured that his sensei would teach him some awesome jutsu and then Naruto could impress Sakura, kick Sasuke's ass, and be appointed Hokage. Logic and common sense had no role whatsoever in this fantasy. Naruto perked up when he heard Iruka say his name, and promptly banged his head on the desk in unhappiness.

"Team Seven will be Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke. Their Jonin-sensei will be Hatake Kakashi," Iruka intoned in a bored voice. He continued with his list. "Team Eight will be Hyuga Hinata, Aburame Shino, and Inuzuka Kiba. Their Jonin-sensei will be Yuhi Kurenai. Team Ten will be Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Choji, and Yamanaka Ino. Their Jonin-sensei will be Sarutobi Asuma…"

Naruto tuned Iruka out again in favor of reveling in his unhappiness. While Naruto had no complaints about spending more time with Sakura, he knew that Sasuke would be difficult to get along with to say the least. Even worse, both Sakura and Sasuke were much better ninjas than Naruto was, when Naruto was feeling humble enough to admit it. They knew more ninjutsu including a few elemental techniques, nearly always won their taijutsu spars, and were at the top of the class. Naruto, by contrast, only knew the substitution and transformation jutsu, and couldn't do them without the full hand signs. Both his teammates could substitute, transform, and generate doppelgangers without any signs at all. Naruto's taijutsu was mediocre, and he knew he had no talent whatsoever for genjutsu. Unless the demon vessel worked constantly to improve, he would be the weak link in the team. That was unacceptable. Maybe he could visit the Konoha ninja archives and check out some jutsu scrolls. Reading had never come easily to him, but he had to do something to get stronger.

"At least you get to stick together," Naruto congratulated Hinata and Kiba, "but I don't think I've ever heard of this Shino guy. Do you know him?" Hinata started to stutter out a response, but Kiba beat her to it.

"I don't know him well," he clarified, "but I think Shino was in the other class. He always sat alone, and I swear I saw him talking to a bug a couple of times. On the other hand, he was pretty high in the class ranks and is pretty quiet too."

"I guess that makes you the team loudmouth!" teased Naruto. Kiba made a sour face and turned away from his friend in mock anger. Hinata, meanwhile, was worried about Naruto. She had seen him interacting with Sasuke and Sakura in the past. These meetings always ended in them ignoring him until the demon vessel annoyed them into action. Then, Naruto would challenge them to a spar (if it was Sasuke) or ask them out on a date (if it was Sakura). However, he would be summarily crushed, and whether the beating was physical or verbal it was equally devastating.

"Wh-wh-what about you?" the shy girl stuttered, "With S-Sakura and Sasuke on the same team as you…" She trailed off, unable to even imply anything negative about her classmates, no matter how much she disapproved of their treatment of Naruto. Naruto gave her a sunny grin.

"Don't worry, Hinata," he reassured her, "I'm strong too, and I'm gonna keep getting stronger. I won't lose to them dattebayo! I'm gonna be Hokage someday, so I can't let something this small slow me down." Hinata, however, had not heard a word he had said. As soon as Naruto had smiled at her (AT HER! SQUEEE!) Hinata had flushed bright red and fainted clean away, clunking her head on the table. "Huh? Hinata! Are you ok? Why do you always fall down when I look at you? And what's so funny, anyway?" The last sentence was directed at Kiba, who had collapsed in giggles, nearly dropping Akamaru off his head in the process. Unable to respond, the tracker-in-training could only gesture wordlessly at Naruto. This in turn only increased the demon vessel's frustration. Naruto was about to tell Kiba exactly what he thought of him, when Iruka called out for Hinata, Kiba, and Shino to go out to park just south of the Academy. Their Sensei was running a bit late and had sent for them to meet her there. Naruto noticed with surprise that while he, Kiba, and Hinata had been talking, the room had emptied, and only Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, and Iruka were left in the room. Since Naruto didn't really want to talk to Sakura while she was fawning over her crush, none of the genin spoke.

An hour passed, and Iruka left, apologizing with the explanation that he had to meet with the Hokage to turn in some paperwork. Another hour passed. Sakura finally managed to crack Sasuke's emotionless façade. However, all she managed to get through the crack was a passionate plea for her to shut up, please! The next hour passed in silence, while Naruto seriously reconsidered the promise he had made to Iruka to not prank anymore. This Kakashi guy was so late! Surely it would be ok just this once…

Just as Naruto had made up his mind to give this Kakashi guy the pranking of the century, but before he had gotten up to start preparing, a man of indeterminate age poked his head into the classroom. The man had a shock of silver hair that stood straight up, and he wore a black cloth over the lower half of his face with the standard Konoha uniform. His only nonstandard piece of gear was a tanto hanging off his belt. His konoha headband was slanted down over his left eye. All that was visible was his right eye, which looked kind of… sleepy.

"You're late!" Sakura and Naruto shouted at him. Sasuke gave a grunt that could have been interpreted as agreement with this statement.

"Hmmm," the man mused in a bored tone, "My first impression of you is: you're whiny." Team seven winced as one when they heard his assessment. "I suppose I'm your sensei. Meet me on the roof." The man, presumably Kakashi, vanished in a swirl of leaves. The genin followed, but not without a great deal of grumbling all around. First Kakashi had made them wait, and then insulted them. Once they reached the roof, they found the jonin already there, seated and gazing at them with his visible eye. They sat facing him, and glared back.

Kakashi broke the silence first. "Well, I've read your official assessments from the academy. But, we all know those aren't worth the paper they're printed on, so I really know nothing about you three. So. Tell me a little about yourselves. You know… Likes, dislikes, hobbies, dreams for the future, what specializations you're considering, that sort of thing."

"Eh?" Naruto scratched his head in confusion, "You mean there's more than one kind of ninja?" Sasuke rolled his eyes, Kakashi dropped his face into his palm with a loud smack, and Sakura whacked Naruto upside the head.

"Naruto you idiot!" she berated him. "Iruka-sensei only explained it like six times! We had ninjas in from the different branches of Konoha's services to explain their jobs and search for potential recruits. How could you have missed this?"

"I dunno," he replied sheepishly, "I coulda been asleep, but that sounds like an interesting lesson. Not like those boring lectures. Oh, yeah! I remember now! That ANBU guy came in, and he had a creepy mask, and he didn't say anything, just sort of loomed in the back, and then when it was his turn to talk he just made a couple of signs and then something out in the courtyard went boom. We all went to look and when we turned back he was gone. That was so cool!"

Sakura gave Naruto a disdainful look. "That's what you remembered? Are you serious?"

"Let's get back on track now, please," Kakashi interrupted what was rapidly escalating into a massive argument. "You, dandelion. Introduce yourself." He pointed at Naruto.

"Dandelion?" asked Naruto incredulously.

"You have yellow hair that sticks up everywhere and you're skinny as a rail. Dandelion. Start talking." Kakashi confirmed.

"Uh, ok," Naruto quickly recovered his composure and his grin, "My name is Uzumaki Naruto dattebayo! I like ramen, and spending time with my friends. Especially at Ichiraku Ramen, and especially when Iruka-sensei is buying. I hate the three minute wait after I pour in the boiling water, and anyone who insults my friends. Someday, I'm gonna be the Hokage, and then everyone will respect me dattebayo! My hobbies… practical jokes, and training, I guess. I dunno what my spe-cial-ization is gonna be." Naruto stumbled over the unfamiliar word, "But I'm gonna become strong enough to be Hokage, so I haveta be able to beat everybody! And I will dattebayo!" Kakashi gave Naruto a look, like the boy was being judged. The verdict was unclear.

"Now, wasn't that interesting," the jonin said, "None of that was in the file. Alright, you next, bubblegum."

"You're just making up nicknames based on our hair," Sakura accused. Kakashi just crinkled up his eye and gave her a weird look, like he was trying to show that he was smiling despite most of his face being covered. Sakura decided to ignore him and continue with her introduction. "I'm Haruno Sakura. What I like, well, it isn't a thing so much as a person, and…" she trailed off, blushing and gazing at Sasuke, who ignored her. Sakura continued, "I hate Naruto! And Ino-pig! My dreams…" She gazed dreamily at Sasuke again, who looked like he was considering jumping off the building to escape. "My hobbies… training. And I also have a collection…" She didn't elaborate. Kakashi (correctly) guessed the collection might contain Sasuke's discarded undergarments. "I'm not sure what I want to specialize in yet. I know I have the chakra control to be a medic, or a genjutsu expert, but I also like using ninjutsu and the academy teachers said I was really good at it, so…" Kakashi gave her a contemplative look, and then turned to his third student.

"Ok, duck-head. You get to go last" he told Sasuke. The Uchiha responded to Kakashi's insult with the patented Uchiha Grunt, an all-purpose disdainful response designed exclusively for the Uchiha clan's use. At least, that was the official story. It seemed believable, because nobody but Uchiha clan members ever used the Uchiha Grunt.

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke," he muttered, just loud enough for his team to hear. "I don't particularly like anything, and I dislike far too many things to name. I don't have a dream. Those are for naïve fools, and people who lack certainty. I will restore my clan, and there is someone who I have sworn to kill." With that, Sasuke activated his Sharingan for dramatic effect, and returned to brooding. The Sharingan is a unique ocular technique exclusive to members of the Uchiha clan, and is only awakened when an Uchiha is in life-threatening danger or experiencing strong emotions. Like the Byakugan, it is a Kekkei Genkai technique, or a technique that can only be done by people with a specific set of genes. The Sharingan can let the user replicate most ninjutsu and taijutsu after only seeing it once. It can also detect chakra, defeat all but the strongest illusions, and let the user read others movements for a sort of limited precognition. A skilled user with a fully developed Sharingan can even copy techniques as they are being used and negate them by turning the same technique against the original, as well as cast exceptionally strong illusions of their own. However, Sasuke's glowing, red Sharingan only showed a single teardrop mark in the iris, swirling about. In a fully mastered Sharingan there are three teardrops, so Kakashi doubted Sasuke could use his inherited technique very well.

"Well, aren't you an interesting bunch," Kakashi thought out loud. His next words addressed the genin directly, "Now that we all know each other, I think it's time to explain your first task as a team." Naruto took a deep breath to begin his usual excited babbling, but Sakura covered his hand with her mouth and whispered to him to shut up and pay attention. Kakashi ploughed forward with his statement despite the quiet scuffle, "Survival training."

"Survival training?" Sakura asked in confusion, "But we did a lot of that at the academy."

"True," Kakashi allowed, "But this is a special exercise." He chuckled darkly, and his students flinched. "You see, the academy graduation exam is good for weeding out the really hopeless cases, but all it does is tell the village whether you have what it takes to be genin or not. If you want to study under a jonin-sensei and maybe be promoted someday, the village wants to be sure that you aren't wasting a jonin's valuable time."

"We're gonna have to take another test, aren't we?" Sakura realized with a groan. "And ordinary survival training isn't exactly strenuous. So, what's the catch?"

"I guess you earned those high marks in the academy," observed Kakashi in a mocking tone, "The catch is that you'll be surviving against me. If you succeed, you'll be made official members of Team Seven, and I'll train you until you are promoted to chunin. If you fail, though, you'll be shunted into the genin corps as a waste of my energy. Oh, and one last thing. This test has a 66% failure rate, so at least two and possibly all three of you are definitely headed for the corps." The jonin looked very smug and satisfied at the thought of his students failing. "So, if you think you have what it takes, come to training ground 7 at 5:00 sharp tomorrow morning. Bring whatever equipment you think you'll need. Don't eat breakfast, though, unless you like throwing up." The genin all started protesting at once, but Kakashi just vanished in a swirl of leaves again, and none of them could figure out where he went. Once Kakashi left, Naruto promptly asked Sakura out. She shot him down, trampled on his apparently indestructible self-esteem, and then asked Sasuke out with a giggle. He gave her the Uchiha Grunt, in a negative tone, and then left. Naruto asked Sakura out again, thinking that with Sasuke out of the picture she might be more agreeable. Instead she proceeded to beat him into the ground in frustration and anger. In other words, it was business as usual as far as interactions between the members of Team Seven went.

Naruto stayed up late that night pummeling a hastily-constructed effigy of Kakashi, and getting his meager supply of ninja tools ready. As an orphan with neither a clan, nor a large stipend from the village, Naruto's weapons and supplies were scrounged from what other ninja had left in training fields, and were not in great condition. He hoped to be able to afford better gear, and food other than instant ramen, once he started going on missions. Not that ramen wasn't the food of the gods, but a little variety was nice and would probably help him get taller, according to Iruka-sensei.

The next morning, Naruto made sure to arrive fifteen minutes early, just to be sure that he was on time. Sasuke and Sakura showed up a few minutes before five, Sakura already pestering Sasuke. 5:00 came and went, and Kakashi didn't arrive. The three genin decided to warm up with some stretches and light sparring. 6:00 came and went. They kept warm with some light jogging, and surprisingly civil conversation. By 7:00, they were sitting by three logs sunk next to each other in the middle of the training ground, grumbling their mutual dislike of their sensei. By 8:00, Naruto had annoyed Sakura into beating the tar out of him, while Sasuke watched in mild amusement. When 9:00 rolled around, and Kakashi finally made his grand appearance, Naruto was moaning in mostly-faked pain on the ground while Sakura fawned over Sasuke. Their tardy sensei's excuse didn't help their moods at all. "Sorry, kids," he breezily said, not sounding sorry at all, "A black cat crossed my path, and I had to take the long way around." At this point, the genin would have cheerfully murdered him if they'd thought they could get away with it. Perfect, for him at least. "So, are you ready for the test?"

"We've been ready," groused Sakura, "For four freakin' hours!"

"So then you don't want to know the rules of the test?" asked Kakashi in a sweet tone, "It'll be hard to pass that way."

"Just tell us then already dattebayo!" Naruto burst out. Being patient did not sit well with him.

"Since you're so excited," Kakashi allowed, "I suppose I can explain." The jonin pulled an alarm clock out of the large bag he had brought with him. "This clock is set for noon. You have until then to steal these from me." He held up two small silver bells. "The person who doesn't get a bell will definitely be going to the genin corps, and will not get one of these bento boxes I brought for lunch. Instead, this person will be tied to one of those stumps, while I eat their lunch in front of them." The genin's faces fell, as they realized why Kakashi had told them to avoid breakfast. The masked man could hear their stomachs growling in chorus. "You are free to use any methods you wish, but strike as if you mean to kill, or you won't stand a chance."

"Isn't that dangerous?" asked Sakura nervously.

"If one of you manages to actually wound me, I'll consider you to have automatically passed," Kakashi stated. The tone of his voice made it obvious that he didn't consider this possible. "If you kill me, that's worth an automatic promotion to jonin. Since you'd have just killed a jonin, you would clearly be at the proper level." He gave his odd 'see that I'm smiling' look. When no other questions were offered, he looked each of the genin in the eyes. "If there are no other questions? Alright… begin!" Sakura and Sasuke promptly dashed for cover and hid themselves well. Of course, Kakashi knew exactly where they were, but most genin would have been fooled. Naruto, on the other hand, charged straight at Kakashi, throwing a kunai knife at the older ninja with a wordless yell. Kakashi caught it with one hand and tossed it aside. The thrust his other hand inside his weapon pouch. Naruto displayed unexpected caution and stopped short to see what weapon Kakashi was pulling out. He was stunned when Kakashi drew not a weapon but a well-read orange book. The title, "Make-Out Paradise: Make-Out Violence", was clearly visible on the cover.

"Eh?" Naruto shouted, "What are you doing?"

"Something you seem unfamiliar with," Kakashi taunted, "Reading. What did you stop for? Keep going! It's not like this is going to make any difference, considering who I'm up against."

"I'm gonna flatten you!" screamed Naruto in fury, and he charged in again, throwing a wild haymaker punch. Kakashi swayed backward, and Naruto hit nothing but air. Not one to give up easily, the boy threw several more punches and kicks at Kakashi with similar results. However, Kakashi was driven backwards, until the combatants were on the edge of a river that snaked through the training ground. Once there, Kakashi tripped his opponent during a particularly wild punch, sending Naruto into the river with a loud splash.

"Cool down, hothead," Kakashi admonished, "You'll never beat anyone if all you can do is go berserk on them and flail around." Naruto tried to grab Kakashi's ankles and pull him into the water, but to his astonishment the jonin simply stepped out onto the water's surface, kicked Naruto off, and walked back onto land, towards the position he had started in, still reading. The Jonin ignored the caltrops Naruto had scattered when he was tripped, and to Naruto's disappointment didn't step on a single one. However, Naruto was not one to give up so easily. He pulled himself up out of the river, and charged Kakashi again. Without even looking in Naruto's direction, the jonin sidestepped, and Naruto blew past him. When the younger ninja started to turn around to attack again, he heard a soft thrumming noise behind him. Before the hyperactive genin could react, he found himself suspended several meters off the ground by his ankles from a noose tied to a nearby tree.

"Crap!" exclaimed Naruto, waving his arms in impotent fury, "When did he have time to set a trap?!"

"You mean you didn't see me do it?" Kakashi asked slyly, "I even tried to make it obvious, just for you. Wow. You really aren't very good at this, are you?" Naruto's reply was an inarticulate scream of frustration.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, Sakura and Sasuke were planning their own attack. Having seen Naruto defeated so easily, they had decided that neither of them stood a chance of getting the bells on their own. Since Sakura was the second-best academy student, Sasuke figured that she could be helpful, even if her proclamations of undying devotion to him were slightly disturbing. Sakura, who practically worshipped Sasuke, would have done anything for him, and had agreed to help immediately. Besides, there were two bells, and two of them. It was too bad about Naruto, but he was annoying, and almost useless. He had done one useful thing, though. He had distracted Kakashi, and unintentionally positioned the jonin so that his back was to the river, and the plotting pair. His sacrifice would be appreciated, but he would not be missed when he ended up failing.

Sakura started the combined attack. The top rookie kunoichi made a single hand seal, and six sections of the river rose up, forming exact duplicates of her. Five of them drew handfuls of shuriken and hurled them at Kakashi, one doppelganger after the other, while the sixth dashed forward, hoping to take the bells. Kakashi struck the charging clone in the face, disrupting it, and it reverted into the water it was made from. The jonin easily avoided the storm of shuriken, even catching several that would have struck Naruto. However, when Kakashi tried to close with the remaining clones, he was blocked off by a massive fireball Sasuke had breathed out from cover. When the flames died out the Jonin was nowhere to be seen.

"Did we get him?" Sakura asked Sasuke excitedly.

"No," the Uchiha replied, "the grand fireball jutsu isn't powerful enough to make someone turn to ash. Since there aren't remains, our sensei dodged." Sasuke's analysis, while logical, was incorrect. Kakashi hadn't been hit because he'd never been in the clearing in the first place. While he was tripping Naruto into the river, the jonin had made and replaced himself with a water doppelganger, using the same technique Sakura had tried to catch him off guard with. Kakashi was in fact hidden right behind Sakura and Sasuke, and he was… displeased with them. Sure, the two had worked together, and had shown decent tactics and jutsu. But, they had also abandoned Naruto, and not especially cared if their third teammate was hit by their attacks. Aside from the shuriken the water clone had intercepted, Naruto would have been roasted by Sasuke's fireball if the clone hadn't shielded the blonde idiot with its body. Kakashi had originally intended to use the attack he was planning for Sasuke on Naruto, but after seeing Sasuke in action, the jonin figured that the Uchiha needed his ego punctured much more badly than either of his teammates.

"Yes, I did dodge," Kakashi stated quietly from behind his students. Sakura and Sasuke both jumped, and then started to turn around to attack him. They were far too slow to avoid what was coming. Kakashi made a single hand seal, the tiger. Used most in fire techniques, the tiger seal involves clasping one's hands with the index and middle finger on each hand extended. "Take this! Konohagakure village's most secret and sacred technique! ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF DEATH!" With that, Kakashi shoved his extended, clasped fingers directly into Sasuke's butt. The small amount of fire-natured chakra he had stored in his fingertips discharged and Sasuke was sent flying into the river, smoke pouring off his abused pants as he howled in pain. Sakura immediately counterattacked with righteous fury.

"How dare you do that to Sasuke, you pervet!" she screamed. The kunoichi hauled off and punched Kakashi in the face, putting her whole body into the blow. The jonin didn't flinch; he didn't even slide back or roll with the blow at all. Sakura nearly broke her hand on his face, and he didn't so much as twitch. "Oh crap," she exclaimed as she realized exactly how outclassed she was. Kakashi gave her one of his eye smiles, and then kicked her across the river with a single blow. She hit Naruto, who arrested most of her momentum, and tried to catch his teammate before she could fall. All he managed to catch, though, was a double handful of her shirt. Unlike most ninjas, Sakura bought her clothes from a civilian supplier. Sure, they weren't as durable, but they looked good. Sometimes practicality had to be sacrificed, or so she had reasoned when she bought the shirt, for the sake of winning Sasuke away from her chief rival for Sasuke's affections, Yamanaka Ino. The fact that Sasuke had never expressed any interest in either girl was conveniently ignored. And, Sakura's fashion choice had just backfired horribly. When Naruto grabbed her shirt, the civilian fabric was too weak to support her weight, and it ripped apart, leaving Naruto with a double handful of red fabric and Sakura in her underwear. Sakura immediately shrieked and ran for the bushes while Naruto desperately and futilely tried to apologize, because he didn't mean to do it, dattebayo!

Meanwhile, Sasuke crawled out of the river, shaking in fury. He would not rub his butt, oh no, that would be beneath him. Even though it was still burning with pain and humiliation and failure. He was the last of the Uchiha. He would not be stopped. He was an avenger. No stupid, lazy, perverted fool could possibly defeat him! He charged Kakashi, throwing shuriken, and engaged the jonin in close combat. Sasuke didn't go for the bells; he had forgotten that they were even there. All he cared about was making Kakashi pay in blood for the most humiliating experience the antisocial genin had ever experienced. No one treated Uchiha Sasuke like that and got away with it! Except, apparently, for Hatake Kakashi. Sasuke couldn't land a single blow, even with his sharingan active, even with the taijutsu he had perfected (so he believed) during the academy, even with the tried and true trick of concealing shuriken guided by special, fireproof ninja wire inside of a fire jutsu. He couldn't so much as scratch Kakashi. Then, aided by the sharingan, Sasuke realized something even worse. Kakashi was copying his style! Rather than using the stances he had employed against Naruto and Sakura, the jonin had slipped into the Uchiha Intercepting Fist style, the same one Sasuke was using. And, he wasn't even doing it right! His guard was stiff and full of holes, his feet were in the wrong place, and… he was mirroring Sasuke's stance exactly. If the Uchiha had been calm, he would have realized that Kakashi was trying to point out that his student's stance was not correct, and that maybe Sasuke's taijutsu wasn't nearly as perfect as he believed. In this hypothetical scenario, Sasuke would have corrected most of his faults, and benefited from a learning experience, and a bit of a hit to his ego. If he were calm.

Before he noticed Kakashi's stance, Sasuke had already worked himself into a blind rage. He had been mocked, toyed with, soaked, and violated, and he wanted payment in blood! And now, Kakashi was mocking him! This could not stand! Sasuke went through a long chain of seals, preparing to unleash his most powerful and destructive jutsu. The bastard pervert would burn! Unfortunately for Sasuke's plans but fortunately for the surrounding area, the Uchiha had only practiced using the Fire Style: Dragon Head Bomb technique when he was well rested and had all his chakra. Sasuke knew that the jutsu was advanced. He knew that he could only use it once per day, and that it would use up most of his chakra. What he didn't know, because he had never used it in a fight before, was that between the fire and shuriken techniques he had already used that day and his extended use of the sharingan during his fight with Kakashi, Sasuke no longer had enough chakra to use his greatest technique. Instead of a massive blast of flame shaped like the head of a dragon that slammed into Kakashi and exploded, leaving nothing but a glassy crater and possibly some incredibly satisfying bloody chunks, Sasuke produced a tiny tongue of flame, about the size of the palm of his hand. The technique also used up the last of his spare chakra, and his body determined that if he were to survive, all remaining chakra needed to be devoted to keeping his organs working properly. Nothing left over for jutsu, and nothing left over to keep him conscious. Emotionally overextended and suffering from mild chakra exhaustion, Sasuke took a page out of Hinata's playbook and fainted. Naruto, still suspended from the tree, wasn't quite flexible enough to reach the rope holding him upside down with a kunai to cut it, so he ended up just flailing about helplessly. Sakura was in the bushes trying to find a way to cover herself up again, and so didn't even think to try to help. It was safe to say that Team Seven was not getting their hands on a bell, even with an hour left on the clock. Kakashi just sat down on a convenient rock, read "Make-Out Paridise", and enjoyed the show as his conscious students desperately tried to pull themselves together.

When Sasuke came to, he found himself in another position he had never considered he might be in: he was tied to the stump. He was tied to the stump, while Sakura and Naruto were not. He had done worse than Naruto and Sakura. The only way this day could possibly get worse would be for Ino or Sasuke's homicidal brother to show up. Sakura and Naruto were seated leaning against the stumps on either side of him. Sasuke noticed in a sort of detached way that Naruto had lent Sakura his Day-Glo orange jacket. Kakashi was eying the trio with an air of disappointment. "That was certainly an informative performance," Kakashi assessed, "And I am happy to say that none of you will be going to the genin corps today."

"Then, this means?" Sakura asked breathlessly.

"We passed!" realized Naruto excitedly, "Even after the traps and the explosions and Sasuke fainting! This is great dattebayo!"

"I'm glad you are so pleased," Kakashi said, "To fail more completely than any team I have ever tested. Forget the corps, the academy shouldn't have accepted you when you applied. Based on your performance today, none of you will ever become ninja."

"What!?" exclaimed Naruto in shock, "So what if we didn't get your stupid bells? That's no reason to just give up!"

"So you didn't figure out what I was testing you for," Kakashi stated, "I didn't think so."

"Then what were you looking for?" asked Sakura.

Kakashi shook his head in disappointment. "A ninja should figure these things out without being told, you know. The one thing I was looking for, the thing that would have let you all pass, whether or not you got the bells, was teamwork."

"That can't be right!" Sakura exclaimed, "Sasuke and I worked together the whole time." Sasuke grunted in agreement.

"And what about Naruto?" Kakashi asked coldly. Sakura flinched, feeling guilty about how they had treated him. "I heard your whole planning session. You two were planning to sacrifice your teammate so that you could get promoted. Then, when you attacked, each of you aimed potentially lethal attacks at him, which my doppelganger had to block. What kind of teamwork is that?"

"But then why were there only two bells?" asked Sakura in puzzlement, "You told us that only two of us could pass at most. Wait. This test was meant to turn us against each other. And 'cause Sasuke and I both hate Naruto, we made it really easy for you to get us to turn on him… Oh."

"I'm so glad someone gets it," Kakashi stated with false cheer, "One of my old genin teammates had a saying: Those who abandon the rules may be trash, but those who abandon their teammates are lower than trash. What does that make you three? You, Naruto, attacked me without even trying to work with your teammates. Did you really think you could defeat a jonin by yourself? Even if I was holding back, you can't earn a jonin promotion by collecting Make-Out Paradise books! And I've already said what I thought of Sakura and Sasuke's performances. But, Sasuke was the worst. He kept going long after he should have realized he couldn't win, and then gave himself chakra exhaustion. In a real mission, he would have been the first to die. That is why he is on the stump. Confidence is good. So is knowing one's abilities and limits. Arrogance and overconfidence in one's abilities have killed more ninjas than I can name. Including some of the heroes on that stone." Kakashi gestured to a large, black monolith in a corner of the training field. Seeing his students' curious glances the jonin decided to elaborate. This could be the push they needed to start becoming a real team. "That stone is inscribed with the names of the greatest heroes of the village, the most honored and respected of konoha's best."

"Then that's where I've gotta get to!" Naruto exclaimed, "I'm gonna end up with my name right on that rock!"

"Are you sure that's what you want?" Kakashi asked, "These are a very special kind of hero."

"Even better!" Naruto shouted with excitement, "What kind are they? Tell me, sensei!"

"They're the dead kind," Kakashi said, looking away from his students, "That stone is a memorial. It honors those who died in the line of duty and whose bodies were never recovered. It holds the names of most of my closest friends, including both my genin teammates and my jonin-sensei." Sasuke froze. Kakashi figured that he was remembering the Uchiha massacre and reflecting on his loss. Sakura and Naruto were staring at the ground, and the jonin could hear the gears turning in their heads. Maybe they were in the right mindset to start changing themselves for the better now. Maybe. "Hmmm. Well, my sensei would have given you another chance to pass. I suppose, in honor of his memory, I can do the same. But, this test is going to be much harder than our little game with the bells. If you want to take it, eat the bento boxes I brought. But, no feeding Sasuke, or you fail immediately. Understand?" Without waiting for a response, Kakashi disappeared in another swirl of leaves. Sakura took a bento box and started eating. She wanted to give Sasuke some food, but he'd never forgive her if she caused them all to fail for that. Naruto, despite his turbocharged metabolism, just sat and stared at the food. After a few minutes of contemplation, he separated the food into two separate piles in the box, one slightly larger than the other. He took it over to Sasuke and offered him a piece of tempura from the larger pile. Sasuke looked at him in shock, and Sakura yelled at him in disbelief.

"What are you doing, Naruto?" she shouted, "If you feed him we'll fail! I thought you wanted to pass! What happened to 'Hokage-Hokage-Hokage'?"

"Well, Kakashi is gonna want us to work together, right?" analyzed Naruto. When his teammates nodded, the boy continued his explanation. "Sensei said Sasuke had chakra exhaustion. I don't exactly remember what Iruka-sensei said about that in the academy, but how is Sasuke gonna be able to help us if he doesn't have chakra and hasn't had anything to eat to help him get his strength back? Huh?"

"You're right," Sakura realized. It was an odd feeling for Naruto to have gotten something right. "But you don't have to give him so much of yours. I'll share some of mine, too, okay? We've got to work together or we won't stand a chance. And, I don't eat as much as you boys do, so…"

"You!" The genin started, and turned back to the only direction Sasuke could face in. To their horror, Kakashi was standing there, having seen the whole exchange. "You disobey my orders, and expect to pass?" he asked the trembling genin, "Ok. You pass."

"What?" was all that the three could manage.

"I said you pass," Kakashi repeated, "This is the kind of thing I was hoping to see you do. Up until now, all you've done is mindlessly obey my orders like good little drones. That might be what some branches of service are looking for, but in the chunin and jonin corps you are expected to use your own initiative, and think about your orders. No one else I've given that test to has considered helping their team. Sometimes, orders require interpretation, or are intentionally vague or incorrect to confuse spies or just because of bad intel. You need mental flexibility, which I am pleasantly surprised to be able to say you all have. Congratulations, and welcome to Team Seven. Meet me here at 5:00 sharp so that we can begin team training. Just because you passed my test doesn't mean that you're ready for missions. As you are now, an enemy ninja could easily kill you, so I need to fix that. I won't even let my comrades die, and preparation is one of a ninja's most important skills. Don't be late, or you'll regret it." The jonin disappeared in another swirl of leaves. Sakura cut Sasuke down from the log, and the new members of Team Seven tried to walk back into the village together. It took about ten minutes for them to get on each other's nerves and separate in a frustrated huff.

The next morning, Sakura and Sasuke slept in two hours, under the assumption that Kakashi would be late. However, when they arrived at training ground 7, they found Kakashi busy training Naruto in an unfamiliar jutsu. Based on Naruto's expression, it wasn't going well, but he kept trying. "Didn't I tell you not to be late?" asked the jonin with amusement, "Or did you think that I wasn't just being late to annoy you all?"

"Don't lie, Kakashi-sensei!" accused Naruto, "You were so late! You said to show up at five, but you didn't come until six! That's totally late dattebayo!"

"I assumed that you would use the time for physical conditioning," Kakashi explained, "You all really need it, and you don't need me to hold your hand for everything, do you? After all, you all should already know how to exercise." Naruto was satisfied with this explanation. "I was planning on teaching you all new jutsu to round out your skill sets, but since you were late, we might not have time today. But, if you run thirty laps around the training field, and promise to show up on time from now on, I might get you started anyway…" Before he could say anything else, Sasuke and Sakura were gone, leaving behind twin trails of dust as they rushed to finish the laps as quickly as possible. Naruto, meanwhile, was still unsuccessful at what he was doing. The genin made a hand seal and channeled chakra through it, but only succeeded in creating a puff of smoke.

"Hey, sensei?" he asked, "This isn't going so well. You think you could explain this jutsu to me again?"

"If you think it will help," Kakashi said doubtfully, "but I've already explained it twice. Maybe you just need to practice more…" Naruto brought out the puppy-dog eyes, his most devastatingly persuasive weapon. "Well, I suppose I could explain it again. The art of the shadow doppelganger. It's an A-ranked forbidden technique, not because it is especially difficult to do, but because it requires more chakra than most chunin possess. Unlike regular doppelgangers, shadow doppelgangers are solid. They have mass, and can actually do things, although a good hit will still disperse them. What sets them apart from elemental clones, which are also solid, is that shadow clones have chakra. They can use jutsu, and this has the potential to make the technique very powerful. This is also what makes it so taxing, because the clones only have as much chakra as you give them when you use the jutsu, and if you don't give them enough the technique won't work." Kakashi demonstrated the single hand sign again, and created a clone with a puff of smoke. "Because of how much chakra the jutsu requires, it's perfect for you"

"Because I don't get tired easy, right sensei?" asked Naruto, "I'll get this down no problem! Just you see dattebayo!"

"Try this," Kakashi offered after watching a few more unsuccessful attempts, "Shadow doppelgangers need to move, so you can't just keep your chakra stationary. Try letting it flow around inside the doppelganger…"

When Sakura and Sasuke finished their laps and panted back into the clearing, they were greeted by a scene from their nightmares. Naruto had multiplied. Now there were three of him. Sasuke hopefully attempted a genjutsu-dispelling chakra pulse, which didn't decrease Naruto's numbers. When the Narutos spotted their teammates, all three bounded over and started talking excitedly at once, leaving Sakura and Sasuke unable to understand what any of the Narutos were saying. After a few minutes of indecipherable jabbering, Naruto noticed his teammates plight, and two of him vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Oh, those were doppelgangers," Sakura sighed with relief, "Thank goodness. The reason I imagined was much worse." Sasuke relaxed slightly, and stopped considering stabbing himself. Aside from chakra pulses and ocular ninjutsu, the only way to dispel a genjutsu is pain, which disrupts the caster's control over the victim's senses.

"Not just ordinary ones," Naruto bragged, "Those were Shadow Doppelgangers! They can even touch stuff, and do jutsu! They're much cooler dattebayo!"

"I thought the art of the shadow doppelganger was an A-ranked, jonin level forbidden jutsu," Sasuke doubted, "How could this idiot master an A-ranked technique in just a few hours?!" Naruto started to argue back, but Kakashi interrupted him.

"Ah, Sasuke, it's not nice to talk about your teammates that way," the jonin drawled, "and shadow doppelgangers are only a kinjutsu if you are a chunin or below, and only because chunin rarely have enough chakra to make one without dying." Kakashi did his odd eye smile again. "Naruto just happens to have an exceptional amount of chakra, which lets him use draining techniques easily. But, he doesn't control it very well, so… Naruto! Go do the wall climbing technique on one of the trees over there to work on your control." Naruto wanted to protest, but a glare from Kakashi sent the orange-clad genin grumbling over to the nearest tree.

"What about us, sensei?" asked Sakura with trepidation.

"Even though you arrived late," reminded Kakashi, "I did promise a new jutsu for each of you, and since you finished those laps so fast, I think you've earned it. But, don't slack off on your conditioning, ok?" Sasuke and Sakura both nodded eagerly, while trying to hide how interested they were in the prospect of a new technique. "But, first, I want you to tell me what jutsu you already know, aside from the academy basics. I don't want to teach you something you've already learned."

"Well, I know two other jutsu," shared Sakura, "I know the water clone jutsu, which you already saw, and the earth wall jutsu, which does exactly what it sounds like. But you probably already knew that…"

"You can use jutsu from two different elements?" Kakashi asked curiously.

"Is that wrong?" replied Sakura nervously, "I looked through the Konoha chunin library with Mizuki-sensei, and he showed me a basic jutsu scroll from each element. Those two were the only ones I could get to work right. The wind one was super weak, and the lightning one and the fire one didn't do anything."

"There's nothing bad about knowing how to use multiple elements," Kakashi reassured her, "Most jonin can use at least two, and I can use four. I was only surprised because using elemental techniques is challenging for most genin. They don't have the right focus, control, or density of chakra to use them. The fact that you can use two… And you learned them from scrolls. I am… Slightly impressed. Maybe you really did earn those high marks in the Academy after all. And what about you, Sasuke?"

"I know the grand fireball jutsu, the phoenix flower jutsu, and the dragon head bomb technique, but that last one might still be a little advanced for me," Sasuke admitted in an uncharacteristic display of humility, "I also know the Uchiha guided shuriken technique, and I can use it to guide eight regular shuriken or kunai knives at once, or one of those big shuriken that Mizuki-sensei likes." Mizuki was infamous in Konoha for his preferred weapon, massive shuriken the size and weight of manhole covers. He combined oversized, intimidating weapons with being slightly twitchy in a very dangerous way.

"Hmmm," Kakashi considered his students' skills, "Sakura, I think I'll teach you the hiding like a mole jutsu. It's a D-ranked earth technique that lets you move around underground about half as fast as you can run. It's good for infiltration, evasion, hiding where you went after a substitution jutsu… Anyone who can use earth-style jutsu is pretty much guaranteed to know it. I actually use it a lot. It's a much cooler jutsu than it sounds." Kakashi created a single shadow doppelganger. "Sakura, go with my doppelganger. He'll teach you the jutsu, and stick around in case you need help." Once Sakura hand left with the doppelganger, Kakashi turned to his remaining unoccupied student. "As for you, Sasuke, I noticed during the test that you have your sharingan. It would be a shame if you didn't learn how to use it better."

"What would you know about the sharingan?" Sasuke dismissed Kakashi's teaching abilities out of hand. How could a Hatake teach anything about the Sharingan?

"Now, now, don't be so quick to decide," the jonin admonished, "I may not be an Uchiha, but I've worked with them quite a bit in the past. I actually learned quite a bit from one of your cousins, Shisui the Teleporter. We were stuck behind enemy lines for a couple of weeks, with no one to talk to but each other. He, well, really liked to talk and after the first week he started to run low on conversation material. He talked about his kekkei genkai, I talked about mine… It was only polite to share."

"You have a kekkei genkai?" asked Sasuke in surprise.

"Not as famous as yours, but not really a secret either, so…" Kakashi drew his tanto, and concentrated on it briefly, causing it to glow with a soft white light. "As long as I have chakra to spare, I can make my blade sharper and nearly unbreakable. But, it only works with special Hatake chakra blades. I think this might be the last one in the world." Kakashi sheathed the blade, "but enough about me. While you probably won't be able to do too much until your eyes get stronger, I think I know a few tricks you'll like. This first one is pretty basic: genjutsu sharingan. According to Shisui, it lets you cast genjutsu by making eye contact, with no hand signs. What do you think?"

"I think I want to learn… Sensei," Sasuke responded, swallowing his pride. Shisui was one of the most skilled ninja the Uchiha had ever produced, and had actually defeated Sasuke's detested brother in spars on multiple occasions. Advice from Shisui, even secondhand, was not something the young Uchiha could afford to pass up on.

"Excellent," Kakashi gave Sasuke another one of his deliberate smiles, "Let's get started then."


	3. Making Waves

After a month of training under Kakashi-sensei, Team Seven was getting… antsy. Whatever their personal feelings, the genin had to admit that they had learned a lot from their teacher, especially considering that they had only been learning from him for a month. Their taijutsu and physical conditioning had increased in leaps and bounds thanks to frequent sparring with their sensei and each other. In addition, each genin added several new techniques to their respective arsenals. Sakura had taken to the hiding like a mole jutsu so well that Kakashi taught her a second jutsu, the water bullet technique, a simple offensive jutsu that fires small blasts of water with great force from the user's mouth. Sasuke honed his sharingan, and became adept at snaring people in genjutsu with a glance. He took every opportunity to practice on Naruto, who still hadn't figured out how Sasuke kept getting him so easily. Kakashi also tested Naruto for aptitude in several disciplines before starting the orange-clad genin on the art of sealing. While Kakashi is not a sealing master, he could teach the basics. By the month's end, Naruto had mastered making storage seals of all sizes, and his handwriting had improved to be actually legible. While explosive tags are usually the first thing that students of sealing learned to make, Kakashi decided that he wanted Naruto to be a little more mature before he learned to manufacture his own bombs. Immensely proud of his new skill, Naruto began carrying all his stuff around inside seals. While inside the extradimensional storage pockets the seals created, there was no way for other people to steal his stuff, and any perishable items he carried around would stay fresh indefinitely. Plus, it was always nice when people assumed that he was unarmed and unprepared to prank because they couldn't see any of his stuff.

On the other hand, Kakashi turned out to be a subscriber to the theories that hard work can fix nearly any problem and that anything can be a learning experience. After watching his students exercise and practice their taijutsu, the jonin gave each of them extensive personal attention to improve their physical abilities. He called it training; they called it customized torture. Naruto was forced to drill in the correct taijutsu forms, and hold his stances until his muscles cramped to ingrain them in his muscle memory. Between the drills, the constant chakra control practice his sensei forced on him, and calligraphy practice for sealing, Naruto went to bed with every inch of his body and mind aching.

Sakura didn't have things much better. Kakashi, after seeing her in action, decided that her biggest weakness was a lack of strength and stamina. So, he prescribed a regimen of drills and cardio that would make all but the most dedicated taijutsu specialists balk, and took the girl off her Sasuke-inspired thinning diet with a lengthy conversation with her parents. Sakura would have protested and slacked off, if not for the results. With proper nutrition and constant exercise, she was actually able to keep up with Sasuke during their missions and team training. Naruto, whose demon-fueled metabolism gave him essentially limitless stamina, was leaps and bounds above his teammates in staying power without needing any endurance training. And, much to her surprise, Sakura kept her looks. She actually gained five pounds, mostly of muscle, but she had to admit that she had never looked or felt better. After the girl defeated her arch-rival Ino during a spar with Team Ten, Sakura had to admit that Kakashi knew what he was doing. No matter how unpleasant his methods were.

Sasuke was not left out of the misery. Since his body was in the best shape of the genin, Kakashi devoted his time to Sasuke's eyes and mind. Evasion training (throwing rocks and blunted weapons at Sasuke at unexpected times), genjutsu training (mess with Naruto's mind), conditioning (running up and down trees with the tree climbing technique while Naruto and Sakura were drilled), and strategy training (come up with a workable response to a described situation, while doing a different type of training) occupied the Uchiha's days.

When they weren't training, Team Seven went on missions for Konoha. Naruto's visions of glorious battle, princesses, ninja battles, and explosions were soon punctured. New genin are only sent on D-ranked missions, classified as such because there is no chance for combat. They are essentially chores, assigned so that inexperienced ninja can get used to working with their team and hone their skills in a safe environment. However, Kakashi didn't see the missions as chores, but as opportunities for more training. If a farmer wanted them to dig sweet potatoes, the team wouldn't do it like civilians. What a waste of time! It isn't a chore; it's an opportunity for Sakura to practice her earth-style chakra control, and Naruto to practice moving large quantities of heavy things with seals. Walking some dogs? Ninjas don't need leashes, so Sasuke had better use genjutsu to keep the animals from wandering off. Painting a fence? This is the perfect chance to see if Naruto or Sasuke has an affinity for water style! Paint the fence without brushes; control the liquid with chakra alone for great training! By the end of the month, the genin were sick of D-ranked missions and their Sensei's fiendish ability to make them so much harder than they had to be in the name of training. Sasuke and Sakura kept their feelings to themselves, though. Sakura wasn't about to ask for a higher-ranked mission unless her sensei thought she was ready for it, and Sasuke couldn't unbend his pride enough to actually ask for anything. Naruto, on the other hand, was just as frustrated, and never had a problem with speaking his mind…

On the last day of the month, Naruto got his chance. When Team Seven tromped up to the mission desk to receive their daily D-rank, the Hokage himself was manning the desk. After several seconds of perplexed staring, Sakura voiced the question on all three genin's minds.

"Lord Hokage," she puzzled, "Why are you giving out the missions today? Don't you have more important things to do?"

"It isn't by choice, I assure you," he grumbled, "but Konoha's military regulations state that every shinobi who does not have a genin squad and is of chunin rank or higher must take their turn at the mission desk. Including the Hokage. I would not be setting a good example for the rank and file if I used my position to avoid work, now would I?"

"I guess not," Sakura said thoughtfully.

"Hey. Hey!" Naruto butted in, "So what's our mission today? It better not be another of those boring ones dattebayo! I'm sick of all these stupid chores! What do sweet potatoes have to do with being a ninja anyway?"

"And what do you expect ninjas to eat, then?" lectured Danzo with a glint in his visible eye.

"Ramen!" Naruto shot back. Then he thought about the question a bit more. "And vegetables. And bread. And… sweet potatoes. Oh! Cos we help the farmers, they bring the potatoes into Konoha, and then we get to buy them. Wait! You mean all the D-ranks are like this? There's actually a point dattebayo?! How come nobody said that in the first place?"

The Hokage resisted the urge to rub his temples. Even if the action might ward off an Uzumaki-induced headache, it would not be dignified to show discomfort in front of his soldiers. "Well, if you really feel so strongly about this mission as to resort to insubordination to express yourself, I suppose I could assign it to another team. I think Team Eight might be ready for a C-rank."

Naruto opened his mouth to shout something back, then closed it as the Hokage's sunk in. Crap! His complaining might have cost the team a cool mission! He wasn't sure what insubordination was, but it sounded bad. What should he say? He'd never really thought about apologizing politely to someone before! Oh, why hadn't he paid more attention to Iruka-sensei? This was terrible dattebayo! "I- I'm sorry?" he finally offered uncertainly. Danzo figured he ought to savor the rare occasion of Naruto being (sort of) thoughtful and polite. Maybe if he encouraged the action, the demon vessel might become a capable ninja someday. It was possible. The Hokage almost assigned the mission to a different team anyway. But, the Uzumaki's unique talents for havoc would actually increase the team's chances of success… this time.

"Your mission is this: You will travel to the Land of Waves," Danzo ordered, "The country has recently fallen under the sway of a yakuza boss named Gato, who is squeezing the people of wave for every last ryo they have. You will remove this Gato and his influence by any means necessary; kill him, shame him, dismantle his organization, organize a rebellion, as long as your methods do not reflect poorly on Konoha I do not care. It shouldn't be difficult; the target has several ronin in his employ, but no ninja. Once Gato is disposed of, suggest to local leaders that economic ties to the Land of Fire and Konoha would be advantageous. An architect, Tazuna, has requested escort from Konoha back to the Land of Waves where he is building a bridge to the mainland to contest Gato's control of the nation's ports. Your mission may be easier if he survives to complete his project. My sources indicate that Tazuna is a respected and well-known citizen of Wave. Dismissed! No, wait!" Danzo had noticed Naruto's dangerously gleeful grin. "If you should so choose to unleash Uzumaki's… plans on the target, it must not be traceable to Konoha. Understand?"

"Why do they always single me out?" asked Naruto unhappily.

"Tomato paste," Sasuke hissed.

"You swore you wouldn't bring that up ever again dattebayo!" Naruto exclaimed in a panic, "You said it never happened! We both did!"

"Quit complaining, and it never did," replied the Uchiha. "It never happened. And it will not happen to anyone else, understood?" Naruto opened his mouth to reply, and Kakashi had a sudden premonition of the team standing at the mission desk for hours while Naruto denied everything. The jonin clamped his loudest student into a headlock and dragged him out the door, leaving behind a hurried apology to the Hokage. Shrugging, Sakura and Sasuke followed their sensei.

Team Seven met their client Tazuna near the gates of Konoha. Neither side was impressed by what they saw. Tazuna was old and grimy, with a scraggly grey beard, a once-white rope tied around his forehead, and a massive bottle. The only thing on the bottle's label was XXX but whatever it contained the old man obviously enjoyed it immensely. Tazuna saw Kakashi, who cultivated the impression of being a disinterested pervert, Sasuke, who oozed angst and self-pity, Sakura, who was obsessed with Sasuke, and Naruto, who could annoy inanimate objects. Needless to say, they didn't get along.

Tazuna started off the conversation by making short jokes about Naruto, and things went downhill from there. The day's journey to the coast passed agonizingly slowly, as Naruto and Tazuna bickered, Sakura tried to strike up a conversation with Sasuke, and Sasuke and Kakashi did their level best to ignore everyone else. When the team stayed at an inn near the coast overnight things were quieter, if only because Kakashi made certain that the genin were exhausted before they went to their rooms and the three went to sleep before they could start arguing again.

The following morning was conflict-free as well, largely due to the boat trip from the coast into the mangrove forests that surround the Land of Waves. None of the genin had ever been on a boat before or seen the ocean, and the novelty kept them occupied. However, the ride was over all too soon, and once Tazuna and Team Seven made it to dry land, they soon began squabbling again. Kakashi ignored his travelling companions. After all, Make-Out Paradise was so much more interesting. He was just getting to a good part, where Kune- What was that?! Kakashi's trained ears picked up a faint rush of displaced air behind him. Without stopping to identify the source, the jonin yelled for his students to "Get down! Now!" and tackled Tazuna. Sakura dragged Naruto prone, and Sasuke smoothly dropped, right before a massive sword flew over their heads, cut through a massive maple, and embedded itself blade-first into the tree behind it. In a blur of motion, a man stood on the tree. He was tall, and covered in lean muscle and scars, easy to see because he wasn't wearing a shirt. The man wore camoflague arm and leg-warmers, striped pants, and he wore an armored headband from Kirikagure, the village hidden in the mist. He wasn't wearing a mask, but his face was wrapped in bandages. His distinctive sword was as tall as he was, a huge cleaver with a single cutting edge. Kakashi felt a cold ball of fear embed itself in his stomach when he recognized their assailant. The jonin didn't fear for himself, but for his students. He wasn't sure he could beat this man and protect his genin at the same time. "Momochi Zabuza, formerly of the Seven Blades of Hidden Mist," Kakashi drawled, expertly hiding his dread, "What are you doing here, aside from giving us an exceptionally rude greeting, that is?"

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you caught that," Zabuza responded lazily, his voice grating like a knife across gravel, "Kakashi the mirror ninja, master of a thousand jutsu. I guess your reputation is well-deserved. If I wanted you all dead, well…" As he trailed off, the ninja from mist released his killing intent.

Killing intent is not exactly a ninja technique so much as a survival instinct. It doesn't require chakra, and anyone can in theory use it. The chakra that fuels most of the abilities that separate a ninja from a civilian is composed of spiritual energy from willpower and genetics, and physical energy from training the body. When a ninja hones his or her spiritual energy during training, the ninja also picks up a certain amount of ability to sense the chakra of others. Ordinarily, unless one trains specifically as a sensor ninja, who can detect chakra with a sixth sense, one cannot feel the chakra of other unless they are deliberately releasing large amounts of it. However, over hundreds of generations of ninjas, every ninja (and any civilians who are related to ninja) has gained a certain survival instinct in the form of the ability to sense when a nearby person's spiritual chakra contains the intent to kill. This allows for ninja to respond to attacks they didn't see because they can sense the murderous impulses motivating the strike. To keep from being easily noticed, most ninja train to keep their killing intent carefully controlled and concealed. But, an experienced ninja can go the other way, and wield the intent to kill as a weapon in and of itself. A weaker or untrained opponent will be shaken by the bloodlust, and if they are too weak, they may be paralyzed by fear and the unshakable certainty, whether true or not, that they are going to die. When the nine-tailed fox attacked Konoha, its killing intent was so strong that every civilian within a mile of it would drop dead from simple fear.

Zabuza was not in the demon fox's league, but he was a powerful and bloodthirsty ninja. When he unleashed his intent to kill, Tazuna collapsed, unconsciousness protecting his mind from the ninja's aweful power. The genin had enough training to resist, and luckily (or unluckily) were forced to endure the full force of Zabuza's will. Sakura fell to her knees, sweating and trembling as the kiri ninja's power washed over her. Naruto let out a hoarse cry, and staggered backward. He tripped over Tazuna, but continued backward on his hands and knees, his mind only processing the urge to get away before he could be killed! Sasuke, who had been exposed to high levels of murderous intent once before, on the night of the Uchiha massacre, fared somewhat better than his teammates. The last Uchiha drew a kunai knife in a shaking hand, and moved to stand between his teammates and the monster in front of him. But, despite his resolve, Sasuke could not bring himself to take even a single step towards Zabuza. His every instinct was screaming that if he drew attention to himself, he would die horribly. Kakashi closed his book with a snap, and pulled up his headband, revealing his second eye. Instead of the vacant hole his genin had assumed the headband concealed, his second eye was intact, although a smooth scar stretched from his eyebrow over the eyelid to disappear into his mask. "Why are you here, Zabuza?" Kakashi asked calmly.

"The same reason you are," Zabuza replied easily, "I suppose you won't just hand over the old man without a fight?"

"Sorry, but that isn't going to happen," Kakashi informed him. With that, the Konoha jonin opened his left eye, revealing a fully mastered crimson sharingan. Seeing Sasuke's shocked expression, the jonin added in a low mutter "I'll explain later."

"To see the famous sharingan so early on," Zabuza crowed, "This is an honor." He almost seemed happy to have the powerful eye directed at him.

"All it means is that I will take you down quickly," Kakashi responded.

"We'll just have to see about that, won't we," Zabuza threatened. The kiri ninja made a single sign. "If you can survive this, you might give me a good fight. Hiding in the mist jutsu!" A dense, damp fog wafted out from Zabuza, coating the area in translucent vapor. Zabuza seemed to fade from sight, the ninja and his gigantic sword vanishing into the mist. Sasuke tried to detect Zabuza with his own sharingan, but the genin was unable to penetrate the obscuring vapor.

"Stick together," Kakashi ordered the genin, "Zabuza is a master of the art of silent killing. In this mist, you won't see or hear him coming. It's one of Kirigakure's most infamous assassination techniques. I haven't necessarily mastered all the powers of the sharingan, so watch each other's backs, or Zabuza will stick something in them."

"Heh, heh, heh," came Zabuza's disembodied voice from within the mist. The laugh was sourceless and laden with bloodlust, as though the assassin was everywhere at once. "Eight points cause instant death. The jugular vein. The spine. The heart. The liver. The brain. The kidneys. The clavical vein. The lungs. Which vital, vulnerable spot shall I choose? I wonder…"

Kakashi drew his tanto and infused it with his chakra. The warm glow of the blade washed over Tazuna and the genin, thinning the mist and seeming to drive back the oppressive weight of Zabuza's will. "Talking like you've already won, eh, Zabuza?" the konoha jonin asked rhetorically, "Your confidence may be misplaced. I will never let my precious comrades die." Partially protected from the killing intent, all three genin were able to make it to their feet and surround Tazuna's insensate body, weapons drawn.

"I wouldn't count on it…" To the genin's shock, Zabuza's voice was now coming from the center of their formation! The young ninja turned as quickly as they could, only to see the assassin with his massive blade already poised to cleave Naruto in two! Before they could react further, Kakashi was somehow there in a flash of light, moving too fast for their relatively untrained senses to catch, his chakra blade thrust between Zabuza's ribs in a desperate lunge. "Not bad," the kiri ninja coughed, his body shuddering in pain, "but what if I told you… The real one's behind you…" The genin were shocked to see another Zabuza loom out from the mist, sword at the ready, as the first one collapsed into a puddle of water.

"No," Kakashi breathed, but before he had time to say or do anything else, the assassin cut him down. The genin gasped in shock, but then Zabuza stiffened and coughed up blood. The kiri ninja shuddered, and slumped down, revealing Kakashi's masked face. Looking where their sensei's body had supposedly fallen, the genin realized that the Kakashi that saved them was a water doppelganger, just like the Zabuza that had attacked them. However, the Zabuza that Kakashi had stabbed wasn't any more real, and with a puff of smoke, the image of the assassin's body was replaced with what Kakashi had actually stabbed: a large chunk of cut log. The actual Zabuza had used the art of substitution to appear behind the konoha jonin, and raised his sword to cut down Kakashi. The genin immediately realized their mistake from before. They knew from sparring with Sakura that water doppelgangers were only one-tenth as powerful as the original. They way that the real Kakashi and Zabuza moved was on a completely different level than their decoys.

Kakashi proved the huge gap between a doppelganger and the genuine article by ducking Zabuza's swing, the massive sword only clipping the top of his hair. But before Kakashi could retaliate, Zabuza followed through with a powerful kick that sent his opponent sailing through the air to land in a nearby lake with a splash. Kakashi started to get up, but the water seemed to cling to him, weighing him down. "Something's not right about this water," he mused, "it feels so heavy… oh no!"

"Too late, gullible fool," Zabuza gloated, "Take this! Water prison jutsu!" The water around Kakashi rose up and surrounded him with a liquid globe, Zabuza's left hand thrust through the surface. Unable to gain any traction in the liquid environment, Kakashi was forced to float helplessly in the water. "You're done for," Zabuza bragged, although Kakashi couldn't hear it inside the water, "It's impossible to escape this jutsu from the inside." As Zabuza bragged, the mist slowly disappated, and once he could see clearly again, the mist jonin made a sign with one hand, raising a single water doppelganger from the lake. "Don't worry, kiddies," Zabuza threatened, "You're next."

"Hey, don't talk to us like that!" Naruto blustered, "You won't beat me so easily dattebayo! I'm gonna become Hokage someday!"

"You? Hokage?" Zabuza shook his head in amusement, his doppelganger mirroring the movement, "I can already see that you haven't got what it takes."

"You don't know anything about me," Naruto shot back.

"I know you still haven't figured out the most fundamental principle of being a ninja," Zabuza informed him, "Oh, I'm sure you know it in your minds. You studied it in school," he glared at Sakura, cutting off her protests that she indeed knew all the principles of being a good ninja, "but you don't know it in your hearts. In your souls. Ninja are killers, tools for their villages or their own ideals, and none of you have ever killed anyone. I know all about the Konoha academy's desensitization training, making you kill animals. So you can waste a fuzzy little kitty," he mocked, "so what? By the time I was your age, I had already stained these hands of mine with blood."

"Wha-What do you mean?" stammered Naruto.

"I think," Sakura began haltingly, "I think he's talking about Kirigakure's old academy graduation procedure." Just thinking about it made the kunoichi turn slightly green, "It- it was standard procedure for the village hidden in the mist at the time. In order to graduate… you had to… kill one of your classmates."

"Oh, it was a bit more than that," Zabuza assured the genin, "Each student was given a training partner whom they would live with, sleep with, and train with for four years. At the end of that time, they would be locked in a room together. The one that got to leave was the one who killed his friend. The only reason they changed it was because of when I graduated. I didn't feel like stopping with a single kill, so I slaughtered my entire graduating class. You know how it is," the assassin gave the genin the first genuine smile he had displayed in years, which sent rivers of cold down their spines, "close friends are kind of like potato chips. You can't just have one..."

Upon hearing his words, each of the genin thought back to their academy days. Naruto realized that, had they grown up in kiri, he and Kiba would likely have been forced to duel to the death. Sakura had similar thoughts about Ino. While the girls considered themselves rivals, they had been very close until recently. It was a sobering thought, especially since if he was being completely honest, Naruto would be forced to admit that he couldn't beat Kiba in a straight fight. Under Kiri's system, Naruto wouldn't have survived the academy.

Sasuke, on the other hand, immediately came to the conclusion that he didn't know anyone in his graduating class well enough to care whether they lived or died. If they were in his way to gaining the power Sasuke needed to kill his detestable brother, the Uchiha would kill them without a second thought. The dark-haired genin paused briefly to brood on the Uchiha massacre instead, which he frequently did. In fact, the only things Sasuke did were eat, sleep, train, go on missions, and brood. However, to Sasuke's shock, this brooding session was different. When the last Uchiha pictured his brother, bloody sword in hand, standing over the corpses of their parents, the genin was shocked to see that the bodies of Sakura and Naruto had joined the pile of victims. Upon further introspection, Sasuke was forced to admit that if his teammates died he would feel… well something anyway. It wasn't like the broody genin was especially in touch with his emotions. Resolving to sort out his conflicted feelings later, Sasuke made his choice. He reached into his hip pouch, and surreptitiously tied a length of Uchiha-style ninja wire to the hilt of a kunai, before drawing the weapon smoothly. All ninja wire shares the properties of being immensely strong, nearly invisible to the naked eye, and chakra conductive. Uchiha style wire isn't as strong as the standard-issue wire, but it is highly, hilariously flammable. Sasuke took a few steps forward and bored a sharingan glare right into Zabuza's eyes, ignoring the doppelganger for the moment, fear submitting to iron determination.

"Listen up, you two," he ordered his teammates, "I don't know exactly how that prison jutsu works, but if Zabuza could move while using it he wouldn't be attacking us with a proxy. Unless we get Zabuza to move before Kakashi drowns, we're all dead." Sasuke paused for a shuddering breath. "I… Out of all of us, I'll last the longest against the doppelganger. You two better get Kakashi out of there quick for both our sakes."

"Sasuke… Why?" Naruto asked in confusion, "You don't even like us!"

"I already have enough people to avenge," Sasuke gave a humorless grin, "I don't need to add two more." The Uchiha turned his focus to the doppelganger, and as it started to move forward, the world just seemed to snap into focus. Colors were brighter, details sharper, and everything seemed to be moving slower than before, including Sasuke himself. Discarding these details for now, the Uchiha fired off a brace of small fireballs at his opponent, which dodged them with ease before engaging him in close quarters. This was when Sasuke discovered one of the biggest downsides to the Sharingan. If you aren't fast enough to react to an attack, you get to watch yourself be humiliated in slow motion, and because the Sharingan grants perfect recall, you will never forget the experience.

However, Uchiha Sasuke was not selected as Konoha's rookie of the year for no reason, and water doppelgangers only have a tenth the speed, strength, and chakra of the original. One tenth of Zabuza's full power was not completely out of Sasuke's league. The chakra construct and the genin exchanged blows, with Sasuke mostly on the defensive, doing his best to draw his foe away from Naruto and Sakura. While the doppelganger had superior reach thanks to its sword, Sasuke's lighter kunai and wire tricks allowed him to make up the difference with speed. Swinging around such a heavy weapon, the doppelganger was slowed down enough that Sasuke was moving at about the same speed. With the sharingan helping him (Sasuke suspected, and later confirmed, that he had manifested a second teardrop in his eyes, which had given him the edge needed to survive), it was almost an even match, except that one hit from the doppelganger's sword would kill Sasuke whereas if the genin scored a hit Zabuza could just make another doppelganger.

Meanwhile, Naruto and Sakura desperately wracked their brains for anything that might help. Sakura was distracted by Sasuke slowly losing a battle of attrition against the doppelganger, so Naruto was the first to come up with a plan. Eyes lighting up with inspiration, the boy quickly rifled through Sasuke's pack and found a large collapsible shuriken of the sort that the academy teacher Mizuki was fond of. The demon vessel ripped a portion out of one of his seal-coated scrolls, stuck it to the shuriken with some heat-drying glue left over from his pranking supplies, and passed the hastily-improvised weapon to Sakura.

"You have a plan?" Sakura eyed the glue-soaked shuriken dubiously, "What am I supposed to do with this?" Naruto rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Just throw it at Zabuza. The real one," Naruto didn't really want to admit this, but a life-and-death situation was no time for stupid pride, so "You're better with shuriken than I am, and we don't have another shot."

"Alright then," Sakura firmed up her resolve, "Give me a boost?" When Naruto nodded in assent she took a few steps back, and then sprinted towards him and jumped. Naruto caught her right foot in his clasped hands and hurled the kunoichi higher, giving her some spin. "Take this!" Sakura yelled at Zabuza, "Demon Wind Shuriken: Windmill of Blades!" With that, she hurled the massive weapon at the team's foe with all her might.

Zabuza watched the shuriken's trajectory impassively, and when it drew close he caught it easily with his free hand. "At least you were smart enough to attack my real body, amateurs, but shuriken are useless against- why the hell is this thing covered in glue?!" The assassin raised the shuriken to his face reflexively for a closer look. The way the shuriken folded when held ensured that the seal Naruto had glued to the shuriken was thrust close to Zabuza's face. The hissing, glowing seal. Zabuza first thought it was an explosive tag, but when he took a closer look he realized it was a storage seal. Why would they stick a storage seal on a shuriken? Except, the way the shuriken folded meant that he would have to stick it in his face to identify it, which meant the genin had planned for him to do this-

While Zabuza was busy figuring Naruto's plan, the storage seal did its job: it released the object inside it into the area in front of it. The area in front of it was occupied by Zabuza's face. The stored object was a thirty liter plastic jug of water. Zabuza's nose broke with an audible crunch and the assassin staggered back, losing control of his jutsu and bleeding profusely from the nostrils.

"Head wounds always bleed a lot," the kiri ninja thought distractedly. Everything was wobbling and he could have sworn that no one else had used a clone jutsu, which meant that he was probably seeing double. That likely meant a concussion, and once Kakashi recovered from his near drowning Zabuza knew he was a dead man if he wasn't at one hundred percent. The assassin resolved that if he got out of this alive he would never toy with weaker foes again just because he thought they had no way of winning. But, Kakashi stood up again, coughing, and Zabuza feared that his odds of survival were lengthening by the second.

Suddenly, in a flash of metal, a pair of needles pierced the assassin's neck! Eyes wide and unseeing, Zabuza dropped like a rock, only to be caught before submergeing in the water by a young boy (girl?) wearing thick clothes and a bone-white mask. Kakashi identified the mask, with its painted swirl and etched symbol of Kirigakure (four wavy lines in the places corners would be on an invisible square), as one worn by Kiri's hunter ninjas, tasked with eliminating missing-nin, traitors who flee their former village for one reason or another. "Thank you for weakening him," the masked… person said, "I do not think I could have defeated him at his full strength. Now I must go to dispose of the body, to protect our secrets from our foes." With that, the hunter leaped into the trees with Zabuza's corpse, rapidly disappearing from view. With a sigh of relief Kakashi pulled his headband back down over his sharingan and slowly walked over to the genin, obviously exhausted.

"Uh, is something wrong, sensei?" Sakura boldly inquired, "You don't look so good."

"Oh, it's nothing," Kakashi reassured her, "I'm just a little tired is all. The sharingan puts quite a bit of strain on my body, especially if I use jutsu while I'm using it."

"I assume that that eye isn't your original," Sasuke coldly stated, "Or is there something you need to tell me, Sensei?"

Kakashi gave his students one of his odd smiles. "No, this eye was actually a gift. About fifteen years ago, during the Third Great Ninja War, a mission went south. I lost an eye, and an Uchiha squad-mate was mortally wounded. We were stranded behind enemy lines, with no way out. My teammate, as he was dying, told the squad medic to give me his eye. He said 'If you're going to keep going, you fool, you might as well be a fool with depth perception." Kakashi chuckled bitterly. "'So I'll be your eye, and we'll see what the future holds together.'" The genin looked at their sensei in shock; that was more than the jonin had shared about himself in the entire time they'd known him. He must be more tired than they thought.

"Sensei," Sasuke began carefully, "My father told me… The more you use a sharingan, the stronger it becomes, and the less chakra it needs. Maybe the reason it's so hard on you is that you don't use it enough?"

"I… huh, I'll have to try that." Kakashi walked up to Tazuna and gave him a nudge. The bridge-builder was out cold. "Naruto, Sakura! Carry Tazuna. We need to keep moving."

"Why us?" they both protested.

"Because you didn't fight for as long," Kakashi explained, "But well done. That was one for the bingo books. 'Defeated one of the Seven Blades of Hidden Mist as genin with a storage seal.' You'll send 'em running for sure."

"Sensei, what's a bingo book?" Sakura asked curiously. Naruto probably would have asked too, but he was busy trying to find a comfortable way to carry Tazuna.

"I forgot, you three wouldn't know about them yet," Kakashi admitted, "Bingo books are issued to every ninja in a village of chunin or higher rank. They contain information about a village's greatest enemies and all their missing nin. Bounties, confirmed skills and abilities, weaknesses, and their most notable achievements. Even by my standards, what you three did today was fairly impressive, I have to admit, but don't get cocky. Gato could have even more dangerous goons, and I feel like I've overlooked something. That's never a good feeling."

Sasuke suddenly cursed. "Sensei, it might be different in other villages, but aren't Konoha hunter ninja supposed to take the head back for a bounty and burn the body?"

"Oh no," Sakura caught on quickly.

"What? What's the problem dattebayo?" Naruto, as usual, was slow on the up-take.

"It's possible," Kakashi explained, "That Zabuza is still alive. It could just be paranoia talking, but paranoia can keep you alive in the field. Kiri's standard operating procedure is to dismember and burn the bodies of reclaimed missing nin where they fall. On top of that, the hunter nin used senbon needles as his weapon. Senbon were originally medical tools for acupuncture, and using them properly as weapons requires extensive knowledge of the human body, or deadly poisons. A senbon master could put someone into a temporary death-like state more easily than kill them. Unless they are very precisely placed, senbon hits are rarely lethal."

"So then whadda we do? If Zabuza and mask guy are workin' together, that's bad dattebayo!" even Naruto was feeling nervous, "They're not gonna fall for my tricks again! Whadda we do?"

"Well, we don't know if Zabuza is alive," Kakashi clarified, "But assuming he is we have some time to prepare. Probably three weeks. It takes time to regain one's health after being put into a death-like state. In addition, Zabuza has a broken nose and probably a concussion, courtesy of Naruto and Sakura. That will extend his recovery time. No sane person wants to go into battle with brain trauma. It's a great way to commit assisted suicide. In the meantime, we'll accelerate your training. I wasn't planning on teaching you this yet, but desperate times… you know. We'll work on your chakra control with the advanced exercises, and I'll teach you all some elemental ninjutsu. There definitely should be something in my 'thousand jutsu' for all of you. We'll test your affinities and make sure that you have the strongest possible techniques so that if that hunter ninja teams up with Zabuza he won't totally out-class you. I know that Sakura and Sasuke already use elemental techniques, but that doesn't mean that they know their elemental affinity yet." As the team and their charge continued their walk toward Tazuna's home, Kakashi explained the basics of elemental affinities and how they affect ninjutsu.

"As you all should know from the academy, there are five types of elemental ninjutsu: fire style, wind style, earth style, lightning style, and water style. Nearly everyone has a primary affinity, although that is usually just called your affinity, for one element and a secondary affinity for another. Jutsu that match one's primary affinity will be stronger and easier to learn. Jutsu in your secondary affinity will also be stronger, but not as strong as your primary affinity."

"Then what's the exception," Sakura queried, "you said that nearly everyone has a primary and secondary affinity. So who doesn't?"

"You all probably don't have to worry about this," Kakashi answered, "but I'll explain anyway. Some types of kekkei genkai are called elemental kekkei genkai. People with an elemental kekkei genkai have an equal and strong affinity for two elements, and can combine them to make a special third element. The First Hokage's legendary wood style jutsu are one example; another is the explosion style techniques used by Iwagakure (the village hidden in the stones) during the Third Ninja War. But, currently no families in Konoha have elemental kekkei genkai so you all don't have to worry about having one unless there's somebody you don't know about lurking in your family tree. What you do need to worry about is the relationship between the base elements. Every one is weak against one of the other elements and strong against another. Fire is enhanced by wind. Wind blocks lightning. Lightning penetrates and shatters earth. Earth absorbs water. Water extinguishes fire. When using elemental jutsu, you have to be careful so that your opponent can't use these relationships against you. Also, while you can learn most elemental techniques no matter what your affinity is, if you don't have an affinity for them they will be weaker. The only jutsu you can't use are jutsu whose element is strong against the element you have the greatest affinity for. The only way to use one of those is to have a secondary affinity for it, which is extremely rare. In fact, the only ninja in Konoha who has this is my colleague Sarutobi Asuma, who has an affinity for wind and can use fire style jutsu."

"So how do we tell our affim- Affina- element?" Naruto asked excitedly, "I wanna know dattebayo! This stuff sounds awesome!"

"With these!" With a flourish, Kakashi produced four slips of paper from his pouch. Holding one up to demonstrate, he concentrated on it briefly and it suddenly crinkled, folds radiating out from the jonin's fingers. "These slips of paper are treated to be extremely sensitive to chakra. If you run your chakra through them, they will reveal your affinity. Lightning makes the paper crinkle. Water makes it wet. Wind cuts it, fire ignites it, and earth causes it to crumble. But, you don't get one just yet. First we need to increase your chakra control, so that I can be sure you're ready for this. The ability to use a few elemental techniques does not necessarily mean that you are ready to begin affinity training. We'll start working when we get to Tazuna's house. You three should just consider yourselves lucky that the fight didn't drag on any longer. If I'd had to use the sharingan for too much longer, I'd have chakra exhaustion right now, and I probably wouldn't be able to teach you much of anything before our next big battle. Wouldn't want that, would we? Preparation is the easiest path to victory, after all…"

After a short walk, Team Seven made it to Tazuna's house, where they met the builder's daughter Tsunami and his grandson Inari. However, the ninja didn't interact much with either. The civilians weren't very talkative, Sasuke and Kakashi had no social skills whatsoever, Sakura ignored everyone but Sasuke, and Naruto was too busy fantasizing about blowing away Gato's goons with giant blasts of fire and lightning. The ninjas spent the next few days recovering from their battle. Kakashi guarded the bridge and Tazuna, leaving a shadow doppelganger behind to supervise his students as they learned the chakra control exercise he assigned them: the water walking technique.

Walking on water is an extension of the same technique that lets ninja stick to vertical surfaces. Walking on walls, trees, or the ceiling requires a set amount of chakra to be sent to the feet. Too much and you are repelled, but too little and you'll never stick at all. Walking on water is more complicated. The ninja must emit a small, set amount of chakra from the feet to augment the water's surface tension. The amount required is constantly changing as the liquid shifts, increasing the difficulty of the exercise. Sakura and Sasuke mastered water walking well enough to spar on the surface of the ocean in three days, so Kakashi sent them to the bridge while he gave Naruto one-on-one instruction, allowing his least academically-inclined genin to gain a usable grasp of water walking in another two days.

On the sixth day, Kakashi's doppelganger gathered his students and presented each one with a single sheet of chakra paper. "I guess you three are ready," he told them, "So, show me what you got. Sasuke, you go first." Sasuke raised his paper between two fingers and glared at it. The paper abruptly crinkled and turned black in a few spots. Kakashi blinked "Lightning, eh? That's slightly unexpected; Uchiha tend to be fire-natured. Lightning-style techniques tend toward powerful attacks, disabling shocks, and enhanced speed. They also work well with blades, because metal can conduct the jutsu to increase your range. On the other hand, most lightning techniques have a very short range. Since my main affinity is also lightning, I can definitely teach you some very nasty techniques. Ok, Naruto, you next."

"Right!" The genin held up his sheet excitedly, concentrated on it, and was suddenly holding two smaller sheets. "Wind?" Naruto was kind of disappointed, "I was hoping for something cooler."

"Don't say that," Kakashi encouraged his student, "Wind is a rare element in Konoha, and very powerful in close to mid-range combat. Wind style can blow away attacks or even whole armies of foes, and make powerful slicing blades of air and chakra that can easily cut stone and even metal. Unfortunately, because my affinity is lightning, I can't use wind style, but I can teach you a few jutsu. When we get back to Konoha, you should talk to Asuma. He's our resident wind-style expert. I'm sure he'll help you out." The jonin turned to Sakura with a smile, "And, last but not least, we have Sakura. Show us what you've got."

The kunoichi brought her slip up to eye level, clasped in both hands, and gave it a burst of chakra. Before her astonished eyes, the paper declined to do any of the things Kakashi had described. Instead, the paper quivered, and it stiffened, and it sprouted. As the ninja looked on in confusion, a single, perfect leaf grew from a corner of the paper. Surprised, Sakura lost control of how much chakra she was sending to the slip, and gave it quite a bit more power than she had intended to, and the paper greedily sucked up the offering. With a cracking sound, the tiny piece of paper expanded and grew, throwing down thick roots and shooting delicate branches toward the sky. In the blink of an eye the astounded ninja were looking on a large, old-looking, and bright pink cherry tree, blooming cheerily in defiance of the seasons and climate. Even Naruto was struck speechless, but Kakashi managed to find his voice. The jonin made a muffled, strangled noise deep in his throat, and wandered off into the surrounding woods, muttering incoherently and leaving his genin to contemplate the tree that all logic and common sense said had no business being where it clearly was.

"What just happened?" Naruto's head swiveled between Sakura and the tree so fast that Sakura wondered distractedly in a corner of her mind if he might give himself whiplash. But, all she could respond with was a vigorous shake of her head, as like Kakashi her voice seemed to have temporarily deserted her. The only ninjutsu that created trees… but there was no way it could be that! "Hey, Sasuke! What happened?" Naruto asked, finally remembering his other teammate. However, Sasuke wasn't in any condition to speak either; he looked like someone had just punched him in the gut, the teardrops in his stress-activated sharingan spinning so rapidly, fueled by repressed emotion, as to make his eyes look almost like their usual black.

"Wood style," the Uchiha croaked once he had recovered somewhat, "She can use wood style." With a dull thud, Sakura quietly fainted at the confirmation.


	4. On the Horizon

Sakura awoke leaning against a tree, her concerned teammates standing over her. She considered her last thoughts before passing out, and decided she had to have been dreaming. Yeah, or maybe a genjutsu. Because there was no way she could have a kekkei genkai that had been extinct for generations, that comes from a clan that the Haruno had never been especially close to. However, the girl's denial was cut short by a pink petal, floating on the ocean breeze, that floated down from the blossoming (How? It's summer!) cherry tree at her back.

Taking a second look at her teammates, Sakura saw the tell-tale signs of tension and surprise: Sasuke still had his sharingan active, although he probably hadn't noticed, Naruto fiddled constantly with his headband, and Kakashi, well, he didn't show it much, but every so often he would give this odd full-body twitch, unable to completely repress his emotions.

"Hey, Hey! Are you alright dattebayo?" Predictably, Naruto was the first to speak. "You just fell over, kinda like Hinata does whenever I look at her. Which is really weird now that I think of it. I wonder why… Gah! Off topic!" Sakura couldn't help a weak smile at her teammate's antics.

"I think I'll be fine," she assured Naruto, "I just had a bit of a shock, is all. I… I…" She trailed off, still unable to process what had just happened.

"It was… unexpected," Sasuke contributed.

"I think the best thing we can do for now is put this out of our minds," Kakashi advised. His students looked at him like he had grown a second head. How could they ignore this?! "With Zabuza or at least more of Gato's goons on the way, we need to focus on making you three stronger, as fast as possible. Since I am in no way even remotely qualified to teach Sakura anything about wood style jutsu, we ought to worry about surviving these next few weeks, and the mission at hand, rather than on techniques that are as of right now unusable." The genin nodded their assent; Kakashi made a lot of sense.

Meanwhile, deeper in the woods, a young… girl? in a floral-print dress carrying a basket of herbs rested her back against an old oak, gasping for breath. Not only did the Konoha team include Kakashi of the sharingan, but also the last of the loyal Uchiha, the wood-style master who rumor said was the chief of Konoha's military police, and didn't that blonde kid match the description of Konoha's most recent jinchuriki (demon vessel) of the nine-tailed fox? This was bad. This was really bad. No wonder Zabuza-sensei had lost; a team like that could give the Mizukage himself trouble! The inadvertent spy counted herself lucky indeed that she had noticed the Konoha team before getting within earshot. If they had seen her, she would have been killed for sure! There was no way Zabuza, the chunin minions he had brought from Kiri when they defected, and her were a match for those four. She had to report back right away. Their lives depended on it! She would not let her precious people die, especially not in a hopeless battle! If only she had gotten close enough to hear, she might not have been so worried.

While Zabuza and his apprentice wracked their brains for a friend, acquaintance, or business partner who could let them stand against the Konoha team without cutting too deeply into the profits, Kakashi drilled his team on the basics of elemental ninjutsu. Typical of Konoha control exercises, the first stage revolved around a leaf. Naruto was to cut a leaf in half using wind chakra alone. Sasuke had to burst his leaf by heating the water inside it with lightning chakra. Sakura had to cause the leaf to crumble by charging it with earth chakra, or burst by overwhelming the water inside with water-natured chakra. While most of them knew jutsu that could accomplish the task a thousand times over, doing it without hand signs multiplied the difficulty and the benefits exponentially.

Thanks to her superior control, Sakura finished in a little over a day, and Kakashi assigned her the next steps, shattering a boulder and holding back the waves for at least twenty seconds. Sasuke and Naruto each took several more days, but surprisingly finished at about the same time. Kakashi theorized that competition was good for them. Sasuke's next step was to heat an iron rod until it glowed by running current through it, while Naruto was tasked with cutting a waterfall in half with a blast of wind. Kakashi didn't expect them to succeed; if elemental jutsu training was easy it wouldn't be considered a jonin-level skill. However, they all made impressive progress, and towards the beginning of the third week Kakashi taught each of them new techniques.

Sasuke learned his first lightning jutsu, the Charge Palm. This simple technique runs low voltage through the user's hands, tuned to disrupt the nervous system. A touch can incapacitate for several seconds, a lethal consequence in most ninja battles.

Sakura, again demonstrating her academic prowess, learned two new jutsu. The Earth Void jutsu is a simple but highly effective earth technique Kakashi copied off an elite jonin from the village hidden in the stones, Iwagakure. The jutsu creates a square pit with no time elapsed between casting the jutsu and the effect. The size of the pit varies with the chakra invested, so the user can create anything from a tiny dip to a vast canyon. The technique is nicknamed 'The Art of Humiliation', Kakashi shared, because few things are more embarrassing for an elite ninja than tripping in the middle of a fight to the death for no apparent reason because someone removed a few inches of earth under your feet. Sakura also learned the water wall jutsu, which produces a barrier from nearby liquid or liquid produced from the mouth, depending on the surroundings. Like most water jutsu it is significantly easier to use near a body of water.

Naruto learned his first serious ninjutsu, the Great Breakthrough. A simple wind-style technique, the Great Breakthrough produces a cone of wind that scales in range and power with the amount of chakra invested in it. Naruto's immense reserves meant that his jutsu could fell a good-sized tree at low power. His teammates would have been thrilled… were his aim better.

Once the genin had practiced their new jutsu, Kakashi began taking them with him to guard Tazuna at the bridge. For the first few days, guard duty was boring and repetitive, as such tasks often are. No ninja enjoys guard duty or stakeouts, but know that the monotony does not excuse sloppiness. Such assignments are best described as long periods of boredom punctuated with mortal peril, and this one proved no exception.

The team was on their way to the bridge, on the Friday after the genin had started their duties, and they were looking forward to an exciting day of nothing exciting, when Kakashi motioned for them to stop.

"Something isn't right here," the elite jonin told his team, "I smell blood, and lots of it. I think the bridge has been hit, but I don't think it was Zabuza. If he wanted collateral damage, he would have killed you three," he indicated his students, "from stealth before attacking me during our fight before. I think Gato has hired someone else to finish the job. Be on your guards, cover Tazuna, and wait for my orders. We don't know how many of them there are." The Konoha ninja cautiously advanced, using the construction materials and debris for cover and stepping over several mutilated bodies, which made Tazuna and the genin gag in disgust.

Towards the end of the bridge, the team was greeted with an odd and unexpected sight. A group of five ninja loitered near the edge, only two of which they recognized. Zabuza and the false hunter-nin stood off to one side, the former leaning on his massive sword, as though they were trying to pretend they weren't with the others. Another pair, swathed in heavy robes, watched the final member of the group with a naked mixture of disgust and fascination. The duo wore identical gas masks, Kiri headbands, and clawed gauntlets on their hands. One had a right hand gauntlet, and the other wore one on his left. A bladed chain snaked from one gauntlet to the other. The final member was easily the oddest. He was covered in scars, easily visible because he wore nothing but a tattered pair of pants and a headband etched with an unfamiliar symbol of three slanted lines. The mostly naked man carried an unconventional triple-bladed scythe connected to his belt by a long chain, and he was covered in blood. The sun glinted off his silver hair as he gleefully desecrated the corpse of his most recent victim.

"Huh," Kakashi whispered to the genin, "I recognize those twins. The self-proclaimed 'demon brothers' of Kiri. If they were actually competent they wouldn't have followed Zabuza when he defected. Naruto could probably take them on by himself as long as he didn't get cocky. I don't recognize scythe guy, but he's probably dangerous. By the look of all the blood, he's the one who killed all the civilians, and enjoyed it too. Definitely a sadist, and probably a masochist, based on those scars. Never a good combination. I'd say we're outnumbered, but the 'demon brothers' barely count as half a ninja, and we have the stealth advantage. No way they heard us over scythe guy's ranting." Sure enough, although they were too far away to pick out exactly what he was saying, scythe guy was indeed monologuing as he hacked off the dead worker's legs. "So," Kakashi finished, "We're going to ambush them. Naruto, leave a couple of clones to protect Tazuna. Get him away from here. The real you will take on the brothers, and then go to support Sasuke once you win. Sasuke, you take on the fake hunter-nin, with help from Naruto. You don't impersonate a hunter-nin unless you have the skills to back it up, so he's probably strong. I'll take on Zabuza and scythe guy, with Sakura giving me support from a distance. Earth and water techniques are great for altering the terrain, so use them to keep the two from ganging up on me, and keep your distance. I'll try to take down scythe guy with my first strike to even the odds, but we don't know how skilled he is, so I'm not taking any chances with our plan. Once Sasuke and Naruto defeat their opponent, they'll join Sakura in ranged support. If they lose…" Kakashi gave them an eye smile, before revealing his sharingan. "I don't think that's going to happen. You three are very capable, considering the amount of time you've been on active duty, and I honestly can't think of a genin team I'd rather have watching my back. Sure, you might not have the raw power of the more experienced teams yet, but you've got creativity, brains, and guts, and that's just as important. Pick your targets, and move out! Wait for my signal before you attack. Listen for abnormal birdsong."

The Konoha ninja scattered, slipping closer to their adversaries with impressive stealth. Scythe guy's spectacle held the Kiri ninjas' attention, and they never saw their foes creeping up on them. Sliding behind a dumpster half-full of rubble, Kakashi checked the distance between him and his target. Perfect. The jonin made three hand signs, and concentrated on his right hand. A visible aura of lightning and chakra built up around the limb, resonating with a rising chorus of sound.

Zabuza felt like something was up. He had nothing concrete, but a danger sense honed by decades of practice and combat told him that his life was in imminent danger. Subtlely shifting his giant sword to a more ready grip, the assassin strained his senses for what had tipped him off. Things didn't look any different, he couldn't smell anything, and birds in the trees onshore were raising a cacophony of noise. Birdsong. With Hatake Kakashi lurking around.

"Shit!" Zabuza exclaimed, whirling about in search of a target, "We're being attacked! Where-" And then he knew exactly where Kakashi was as the jonin leaped from cover and streaked across the concrete, hand chirping and glowing with unearthly light, and slammed his jutsu straight through scythe guy's heart with an explosive discharge of electricity. Although he had never seen it before, Zabuza recognized the effects of Kakashi's signature jutsu: Chidori, One Thousand Birds (named for the noise it makes), one of the most powerful lightning jutsu ever created. Even as Zabuza reacted to Kakashi, the other Konoha ninja made their own appearances.

"Hey, guys! Take this!" Naruto yelled in typically flamboyant fashion, "Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" While he didn't need to yell the technique's name, it always, so he thought, was so much cooler when you did. The demon brothers were unable to comment, because the blast of wind sent them soaring off the bridge toward the water. It would be a long time before they hit. The hunter-nin, meanwhile, frantically dodged a knife to the throat from Sasuke. The two exchanged projectiles briefly, shuriken on senbon, before engaging in a furious taijutsu battle. Zabuza moved to attack Kakashi, grumbling over the uselessness of his ally, and... nearly lost his balance and his sword, tripping over a dip in the concrete of the bridge that he was certain had not been there a second ago. Then, things got really weird.

"What the fuck?" yelled scythe guy, startling everyone on the bridge into stillness. How could he possibly be alive, let alone talking, with his heart and one of his lungs completely destroyed? "That fucking hurts, dammit! Do you infidels have any idea how incredibly painful it is to be stabbed through the heart?! Son of a bitch!"

"Uh," Kakashi eloquently grunted, still in shock. Even by ninja standards, this was strange, and disturbing, and slightly scary, "How the hell are you still alive?" He asked the question that was on everyone's mind.

"Hah!" the man laughed, coughing up blood, "Lord Jashin protects me! Such feeble attacks are nothing to his chosen emissary, for I have been granted the gift of immortality for my devotion! And don't think you'll be forgiven for your impious actions, not until I sacrifice your puny lives to his magnificence!" The crazed cultist pulled himself off Kakashi's arm with a wet pop, the hole in his chest already slowly closing. "Now make your peace with whatever lesser gods you worship, fuckers, 'cause I'm gonna slaughter you all! Hahahahahaha-erk!" Kakashi responded to the cultist's declaration by embedding a kunai in his forehead. "Dammit! Stop that! Nothing can hurt me, so why even bother?" The missing-nin yanked the kunai out of his head, and tried to stab Kakashi with it, following up with a series of swipes with his scythe, none of which connected. He finished the combination attack by throwing the scythe and the knife at Kakashi, retrieving the melee weapon with a twitch of its chain, but the nimble jonin dodged those attacks too, dancing out of reach. Zabuza, remembering that he too was in the fight, fired a burst of water bullets at Kakashi, but the jonin substituted with a wooden beam, neatly avoiding the attack. The cultist tried to pressure his opponent, but instead tripped and fell flat on his face with muffled profanity. Zabuza tried to dispel a genjutsu, suspecting that someone was messing with their equilibrium, but he didn't feel any different after the dispel. He decided to worry about it later, and concentrated on attacking Kakashi, engaging him in a furious battle of blade against blade.

Meanwhile, Sasuke and the hunter-nin shook off their own surprise and squared off again. But, before they could resume hostilities, the mist ninja was submerged in a seething, yelling tide of orange and yellow and knives. Sasuke heaved a sigh and elbowed his backup in the ribs; Uzumaki Naruto had joined the battle. Although the hunter-nin defeated dozens of doppelgangers, he took hits in return, unable to completely overwhelm their numerical advantage. As the herd started to thin, Sasuke took advantage of his opponent's lack of mobility, being boxed in by the chakra constructs, and covered the area in a blazing fireball. However, the hunter-nin countered with a wall of water, and avoided being burned.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to surrender?" asked the masked ninja, "I cannot defeat you while holding back, but if I attack with all my strength, you will die. If I must, I will kill my own heart with my blade as I destroy yours. Do not be so eager to throw your lives away."

"You think so little of us that we'd throw away honor and duty after hearing a few words?" asked Sasuke sceptically, "Anyone who falls for that is nothing more than a coward. Besides, even if you aren't bluffing, Naruto and I have moves in reserve too." He sneered at his adversary, "Assuming that your trump card is going to be better? The height of arrogance. You overestimate yourself, and underestimate the power of the Uchiha."

"I only understood about half of that," Naruto added, "But you can't make me give up dattebayo! Never gonna happen! You're like those faceless, lame mini-bosses in video games before the big finish. You're just a speed bump dattebayo! Uh, why is it getting cold all of a sudden?" Sasuke glanced about, sharingan whirling.

"It's more than just that, the air is being infused with his chakra as well," Sasuke returned his gaze to the hunter-nin, "the sharingan can't tell the type, so he must be using a kekkei genkai technique of some sort."

"Then I'll get him first!" Naruto charged forward, fist cocked, and struck out at the mist ninja, but his strike was stopped by a thin pane of cold, reflective material. Ice? Where did that come from?

On the other side of the bridge, Kakashi noticed that the cultist was getting back up. He knew there was no way he could fight Zabuza and another guy, which meant it was time for some finesse. The next time Zabuza took a swing at him, instead of dodging, the Konoha jonin parried Zabuza's sword, directing it into the surface of the bridge. Before the assassin could recover, Kakashi placed a hand on the blade and directed current through the metal. Electricity follows the path of least resistance, in this case through the highly conductive metal and the equally conductive water in Zabuza's body. The missing-nin dropped, twitching, leaving Kakashi free to defend himself against the scythe-wielding maniac who was now assaulting him. Speaking of which… "Who are you, anyway?"

"You haven't heard of me? Fuck, what does a guy have to do to get a reputation these days? You'd think murderizin' a whole village would do it, but I guess massacres just don't go as far these days," his eyes seemed lit from within, "I'm the fucking scourge of Yugakure, Hidan!"

"Are you seriously bragging about being the scourge of Yugakure?" Kakashi affected boredom, "That tourist trap? You must be joking."

"I'll fucking kill you!" this time, Hidan came a bit closer to his mark, scoring a thin cut along Kakashi's arm. "Haha! Now you're dead!"

Kakashi glanced at the cut. It didn't seem deep, and he was pretty sure if it had been poisoned he would have felt it by now. "Seems a bit small for a celebration." Hidan, meanwhile, was licking the blood off his scythe. "That is just… gross…" While Kakashi was talking, the cultist's skin slowly turned black, with the white outline of a stylized skeleton over it. He stabbed his hand, using the blood that dripped out to draw a simple symbol, a triangle inside of a circle, on the ground with a few swift motions of his foot.

"Now we shall experience ultimate pain together!" he screamed in triumph, raising his scythe to impale himself upon it. Kakashi thought it was odd that his opponent wanted to commit suicide; that usually required at least a genjutsu or two first. However, he knew it was never a good idea to let an enemy do something he wanted to do. He also had a feeling that whatever Hidan was doing had something to do with the symbol he'd drawn on the ground. He couldn't draw if he was in the water, so…

"Sakura! Drop him!" Hidan was confused. What did cherry blossoms have to do with anything? Then, it was all academic because the bridge underneath him vanished with no warning whatsoever.

"Fuck!" the cultist shouted, managing to catch himself by impaling the scythe into the side of the hole. Kakashi helpfully dislodged the weapon with a solid kick and an eye smile, sending Hidan into the surf far, far below, where he sank like a stone. "Son of a Biiiii-gurgle." Perfect timing, Kakashi thought, because Zabuza was getting back up.

"Where in the world did you pick up that lunatic?" Kakashi asked conversationally, "That was one of the weirdest fights I've ever been in, and that's saying something."

"Blame bad intel," Zabuza ground out, "My apprentice Haku spied on your team while you trained, and came back convinced that you'd been reinforced by the second coming of Uchiha Itachi himself, Tenzo the captain of Konoha's military police, and the jinchuriki of the nine-tailed fox. Hidan is actually pretty solid in a fight, and he doesn't care much about money, so he wouldn't cut into my profits as long as he got to kill people. It wasn't like I had time to shop around for the perfect ally. Oh, and little miss genin? The one with the earth style? Try that trick on me and I'll gut you."

"Don't worry about it," Kakashi told Sakura, "Go reinforce Sasuke and Naruto. I'll be fine."

"Probably a good idea," the mist ninja allowed, "Go let me play with your sensei in peace, while my… while Haku kills your boys."

"I wouldn't be so sure of victory if I were you," Kakashi retorted, "My team won't die easily."

"Doesn't matter," Zabuza grunted, "Haku is one of the most gifted ninja I've ever met. A real diamond in the rough, that one. In a few years, might even surpass me. Since when your scraps of trash were in diapers, I've beaten fighting skills into… him? Probably, yeah."

"You don't know whether your mighty apprentice is a boy or a girl?" Kakashi asked in disbelief.

"Honestly, no," Zabuza seemed almost embarrassed, "When I first picked Haku up, I didn't really care, 'cause I figured he wouldn't last long. By the time I realized Haku was gonna live, we'd been together a long while, and, well, it was kind of silly for a master ninja to not have figured out something so basic on his own, ya know? So I just let Haku buy his own clothes, and when puberty hit, I figured it'd get obvious, except it didn't. So I gave him the 'talk' for both genders, and waited for a sign… And why the hell am I telling you of all people this?"

"Maybe because we have similar problems?" offered the Konoha ninja, "I mean, I know the official records say Sasuke's a guy, but he looks really girly, and he never acknowledges the legions of girls trying to ask him out, so I have my doubts he's interested at all. Could just be he's more emotionally stunted than the average ANBU agent, but…" The two sensei shared an overwhelming impression of mutual sympathy. "Pity we're on opposite sides."

"Can't just abandon my mission," Zabuza let out a heavy breath, "Once you drop one, everybody assumes you ain't trustworthy anymore, and you'll never work again." He raised his sword again, "But if by some miracle we both walk away from here alive, I'll buy you a drink sometime."

"I'll hold you to that," Kakashi closed his remaining original eye, sharingan whirling, and the master ninja clashed again. Kakashi feinted high, and then sent a thrust in below his opponent's parry, taking advantage of his lighter, faster weapon. Zabuza one-handed his sword, displaying impressive strength, and parried the chakra blade with a kunai in his free hand, attempting unsuccessfully to pull Kakashi into overextending. The jonin instead used the momentum to plant a kick on the assassin's chest, which the missing-nin weathered with a grunt of pain, as he planted a slip of paper sporting an explosive seal on Kakashi's sandal, forcing him to disengage and remove it or lose his foot. Taking advantage of the space, Zabuza chained together a series of hand signs and fired a mass of water in the shape of a giant shark at his foe, which Kakashi mirrored exactly, the two jutsu cancelling each other out in an explosive burst of liquid. Zabuza sighed again; if Kakashi was planning to copy everything his foe did, this was going to be a long and tedious fight.

On the other side of the bridge, Sasuke and Naruto found themselves having a bit more trouble than they'd expected. Haku turned out to be gifted with the ice-style kekkei genkai, which allowed him to control not just the shape of water, but also its temperature, greatly increasing the power of even the simplest water-style technique. And that wasn't even the worst of it. Currently, the Konoha genin were surrounded by a loose dome of icy mirrors. Haku's jutsu somehow let him project his image onto each mirror, and travel between them with a technique halfway between teleportation and the high-speed body flicker jutsu. Sasuke had tried to track Haku with his sharingan, only to discover that just because he could see Haku moving didn't mean he could dodge the mist ninja's endless hail of senbon. Naruto tried to pin his elusive opponent down with another doppelganger rush, but he couldn't move fast enough to defend his doppelgangers from being struck before they could reach their targets. Despite the boys' best efforts, Haku was slowly wearing them down.

It was this situation that Sakura saw from the outside, concealed behind a cement mixer near the battle. She carefully observed the fight, hoping to find a weakness in Haku's technique, so far unsuccessfully, and… something feels off… Genjutsu! Franticly, Sakura agitated her internal chakra, breaking the mental technique with some difficulty. Even while fighting like that, Haku could cast genjutsu? Wow, he was really good.

Inside the dome, Sasuke bit back a curse. Normally, he would be thrilled that Sakura was taking her training seriously, becoming more helpful and less of a creepy stalker. Right now, he wished she was a bit less skilled at breaking genjutsu; how was he supposed to tell her his plan without Haku noticing if she broke his illusory message? Resolving to give it one more try, the Uchiha made eye contact with his teammate, and set chakra surging through the girl's optic nerves.

This time, the illusion was significantly stronger. Sakura couldn't throw it off before it formed… words in front of her? Why would an enemy want to show her… oh, no! This was from Sasuke, and she'd almost ignored it because she was stupid and paranoid and… wait! What was he saying?

"When I raise my right hand above my head, put an earth wall directly in front of me. Dispel this again and I swear upon my family name that I will never, ever date you, ever – Uchiha Sasuke," she read, shuddering in relief. Good thing she hadn't been so quick that time; the consequences for her love life could have been cataclysmic!

Chastened, Sakura watched her crush like a hawk, not that she would ever watch him another way. Wait for the signal. Wait for it… There! With a quick hand sign, she sent a blocky barrier of concrete raising with a grinding noise right in front of Sasuke, grazing his nose.

On the other side of the wall, Sasuke smirked as he heard the dull report of mask striking concrete. As he'd thought, Haku's technique made him move too fast for him to turn or stop easily without another mirror. Put a solid object in front of him, before he could react, and he'd run right into it. Rounding the structure as the dome of mirrors fell to the ground, Sasuke nudged Haku with a cautious toe, but the missing-nin didn't even twitch. Success! The broody genin checked Haku's pulse, and was relieved to find him still alive. Even if they were enemies, Sasuke hadn't intended to kill Haku, especially with Sakura dealing the final blow. She definitely wasn't ready to kill someone yet. Naruto, pulling several needles out of his arms and legs, walked up, and after confirming that Haku was still alive, frisked the missing-nin for weapons, unsealed a coil of ninja wire, and tied him up. "That's done dattebayo!" the exuberant genin declared, "Now let's go help sensei." Sakura walked up behind him and whacked him over the head.

"Are you insane? No, wait, don't answer that," No one could possibly be that stupid, right? At least, she hoped no one could be that stupid. "We'd just be in the way! Still, after what happened last time," she reasoned, "Maybe we should go and watch. You know, from a safe distance. Just in case."

"Probably a better idea than jumping into a fight between two elite jonin," Sasuke agreed, "Hn. Who're they? Third party?" The genin turned about to see a small mob of people making their way up the bridge. The motley crowd was armed and armored with an eclectic assortment of serviceable and improvised gear, and led by a very short, older man wearing sunglasses and carrying a cane. "Or maybe those Yakuza Lord Hokage mentioned. Hn. If Gato wants to attack us, that certainly makes our mission easier, at least."

"Either way, they're armed, dangerous, and headed our way," Sakura pointed out with trepidation, "There's gotta be at least eighty of them! We can't fight that many people, and sensei is still fighting Zabuza!"

"Why not?" Sasuke asked, "Who says we have to fight fair? Naruto could have them outnumbered three or four to one with his doppelgangers, or we could combine my fire with his wind jutsu and roast every single one with ease. We're ninja. Even an army of civilians is no match for us without better tactics and equipment than these guys have."

"About that," Naruto scratched the back of his head sheepishly, "I used a whole lotta chakra fighting Haku, and I'm kinda tired. And I still have needles everywhere! I don't think I have enough left for that many doppelgangers, or a strong enough wind… Sorry?"

"Well, we should see what they want, first," Sakura pointed out, "and have a plan for if they turn out to be hostile, which I admit they probably will."

"A bluff ought to be enough for these guys," Sasuke strategized, "After all, if they only brought eighty guys to take on two jonin, they don't know much about ninja."

"Hey, I've got a great idea dattebayo!" Naruto gave an evil grin, "Time to demonstrate why I'm the greatest prankster Konohagakure has ever seen. Listen up, guys, and they'll never know what hit 'em!"

"I kind of want to hit you for saying that, but after you defeated Zabuza by pranking him, I feel like I should at least hear you out first," Sakura allowed, "so what's the plan?"

After a few minutes of quiet discussion, the three genin approached the advancing army. Sakura spoke up first, "Hey, you all! What are you doing here?" she challenged, "You need to get out of here, now! Don't you know there are two jonin fighting up ahead? If you get caught in the crossfire, they'll kill you!"

"Of course I know that," the short guy scoffed, "One of them works for me, Gato, of Gato Shipping," He seemed extremely proud to say that, "Of course, I never intended to pay him. Ninja are so expensive, and when they disappear, their village always has inconvenient questions… Much easier to hire a missing-nin. No one cares if they die, so I kill them once they're exhausted from their fight, and their adversaries with them. After all, if a village knows their people were fighting a missing-nin, they don't look too closely at the autopsy. So run along, little girl, or you might end up dead!"

"I think you're overreaching," Sakura mimicked his tone, "After all, you aren't the one who's outnumbered here." She made a single hand sign.

"Hah!" Gato laughed at her, "Can't you count, girl? There's ninety of us and only… three… Oh, my."

Inside, Sakura was laughing at the abrupt change in Gato's demeanor. After all, no ninja would be so intimidated by an army of ordinary, insubstantial doppelgangers. Still, part one of Naruto's plan was working perfectly. Now, to sell it. "Didn't you ever wonder why ninja only operate in groups of four? It's not because we're short on man-power, or because we're overconfident. It's because any more than that would be overkill. This ninjutsu is called the art of the shadow doppelganger," she lied, "It makes solid duplicates of the user. Every ninja knows it, and with it any ninja can match an army. All by myself I have you outnumbered, and there are three of us here. Think about it for a second." Naruto and a single real shadow doppelganger, which he managed to produce despite being running on fumes, stepped forward. Phase two, start!

"In case you don't believe us," the demon vessel threatened, "Watch this!" The doppelganger slowly drew a kunai knife, and ran it along the original's palm, drawing blood. "See? Solid. And deadly. You should probably start running now."

Sasuke looked over the crowd of thugs, sharingan blazing. He could see that they were on the edge of panic, but they weren't quite to the breaking point yet. What could he do to push them over the edge? Experimentally trying a genjutsu, Sasuke was surprised to find that it took hold almost without effort. An untrained civilian has a low resistance to such techniques under the best circumstances, and hampered by fear and confusion, these guys had no way to resist. Why, he could put them all under an illusion with almost no effort. Smiling internally, Sasuke swept his gaze across the yakuza, capturing them in a weak genjutsu technique. After briefly considering his options, Sasuke thought of the most frightening people he had ever met, and in the minds of his targets summoned around the genin a pale imitation, all he could manage, of the Lord Hokage's aura of authority and intelligence, Zabuza's weaponized killing intent, and his brother's inhuman stoicism. "But, if you run now, and never return to this country, we may show mercy," Sasuke intoned, "Do not make it worth our while to hunt you down." The gangsters' morale shattered like a window in a hurricane before the combined force of Sakura's bluff, Naruto's demonstration, and Sasuke's intimidating illusion. Many of them peed themselves, and all of them ran. Sasuke gave them an Uchiha grunt as a parting shot. "Losers."

"Hey, hey!" Naruto had another idea, "If that Gato guy isn't gonna pay Zabuza, maybe he'll stop fighting when we let him know!"

"It's worth a shot," Sakura agreed, and the genin rushed to tell him the news. While they were confident their sensei would win eventually, better to not have to fight at all, right?

Zabuza was indeed quite uninterested in resuming hostilities once he'd confirmed that Gato had brought an army to kill him, and been frightened away by three genin using a D-ranked technique. And, he sagged with relief when he learned that Haku was still alive. Most people would have killed Zabuza's apprentice just to be safe, but the Konoha genin had captured him instead.

"You saved my apprentice's life. Normally I'd dismiss that as stupid sentimentality, but just this once I can't seem to argue with the results," the mist ninja awkwardly explained. Thanking people was not something he had a lot of practice with. "You three ever need some unofficial backup, send me a letter. And if by some chance I hunt down one of my old buddies from the Seven Blades, I'll keep you in mind." His tone made it clear that whatever he thought of the Seven Blades of Hidden Mist, there was no love lost between them. With those parting words, Zabuza carefully picked up his still unconscious apprentice, slung his sword across his back, and slowly walked away.

"We're just gonna let him go?" Sakura asked Kakashi, "Aren't we supposed to capture or kill missing-nin?"

"There's no price on his head from us," the jonin explained, "Sure, Kirigakure would pay for his head, but we're not them. He doesn't have a kekkei genkai, so there's no point in capturing him to learn techniques I already copied during our fights. We already have plenty of samples from people with ice style, so we don't need his apprentice. Our bounty on the Seven Blades only applies to current members, not former ones like Zabuza. We've got no reason to terminate him. It's not our mission. And with the scare you three gave Gato... That was a devious plan, and an impressive display of smarts and genjutsu, by the way. We should probably warn our relief to keep an eye out for Hidan, and make sure Gato doesn't try to come back once he recovers from what you three did to him, but I'd say: Mission accomplished!" He gave an eye smile. "Let's go home. I think we're done here."

**Epilogue the First**

When Hidan fell from the bridge, he hit the water at speeds approaching terminal velocity, at which point the water's surface might as well have been solid rock. So, it was no surprise that he was unconscious for a long time while his immortal body repaired itself from the damage he'd suffered. Hidan was no stranger to long, comatose periods of healing. As an immortal, he'd never bothered to defend himself well in combat, as he knew that few wounds could even inconvenience him. However, this time he was reconsidering that choice. This was easily the worst place he'd ever woken up in. Strapped to a lab table, and gagged to boot, so he couldn't cuss out his captors?! This sucked! He couldn't even see his surroundings, with the bright surgical lighting shining into his eyes from a lamp above the table. However, his ears were unimpeded, so he did hear the door to the lab open and close with a quiet creak, and heard the deliberate footfalls of a tall man walking up to the table. A single, pale hand made its way into Hidan's vision, and pulled on a latex glove. The hand then picked up a scalpel, and began sterilizing it in a candle.

"Wondering where you are? Who I am?" the scientist asked in a sibilant voice, "Kukukukuku," His laugh was humorless and inhuman, sending shivers down even Hidan's spine, "Doesn't matter, and I wouldn't tell you if it did. Instead, we're going to have a little talk, you and I, about your fascinating constitution. You see, I have quite an interest in immortality. Well, when I say talk, I mean I'm going to vivisect you, and you're going to scream. I'd apply anesthetic, but your immortal body is unresponsive to the drugs. Oh, don't give me that look. After all, it's for science..."

** Epilogue the Second**

As might be expected in Amegakure, the village hidden in the rain, clear skies are a rare occurrence, and this day was no exception. Water sheeted down from the skies, filling the complex systems of gutters and ditches that kept the constant downpour from flooding the minor ninja village. Even the locals tended to stay inside when it was raining, barring a special event or a market day. Thus, the woman passing through the center of the village was alone in disregarding the climate in favor of a long walk. She had distinctive blue hair and wore an array of black stud earrings, but any other features were concealed under a long, black cloak emblazoned here and there with blood-red clouds. She moved with purpose, but stopped briefly here and there, searching for something, so far unsuccessfully.

However, she eventually came to a dark corner that was different from the others; a person was standing in it. To this person, standing in the shadows, she inclined her head slightly, the most demonstrative gesture of respect one could make without causing rainwater to flow past the collar of her cloak.

"Milord?" she began, "I've received news you will be quite interested in." The shadowed figure did not acknowledge her presence, but she continued anyway. "From the land of waves. It seems that Konoha has an Uzumaki, Uzumaki Naruto, who they've been trying to hide prying eyes."

"You are right, Konan," the concealed figure agreed, eyes glowing purple in the dim lighting, "That is intriguing indeed. I should like to meet this… Naruto in person. Go with our teams to the Chunin exams in Konoha, and make contact there. I'll trust you to compose an appropriate message."

"As you will, milord," Konan gave another brief bow, and started to turn away, before something else occurred to her. "Oh most high and mighty leader?" she asked in a sing-song tone that made the enigmatic figure cringe.

"Yes, Konan?" he asked with dread.

"Why are you standing in a dark, wet corner?" Her voice dripped with false sweetness.

"Ummm, well," he dithered, before hanging his head in shame, "No one takes me seriously when they can see my face… Hidden Rain has electric lights in every home; I can't find a nice shadowy corner inside anymore…"

"Milord?" She quirked an eyebrow.

"Yes, Konan?"

"Stop standing in the dark, wet corner. You'll catch cold. Again."

"Yes, Konan."


	5. Tanuki and Dragonflies and Snakes, Oh My

Returned from their trying mission in the Land of Waves, Team Seven's genin looked forward to a few days of R, R&amp;R (restock, rest, and recovery) to enjoy their greatly fattened paychecks. While the original mission had included combat pay, whenever a jonin-level ninja is involved as an enemy combatant, a mission is automatically raised to A-rank, with an appropriate hazard bonus. The result was more money than Naruto had ever seen at one time in his admittedly short life, and a not-inconsiderable sum to Sakura and Sasuke. Sakura and Naruto were thrilled to have pocket money to burn, in the latter's case for the first time ever. Sasuke tagged along on their expedition, albeit with great reluctance. When Kakashi heard the Uchiha try to avoid spending time with his teammates, the jonin handcuffed Sasuke and Naruto together. He said it would be good for them, and placed the key into a special storage seal that could not be opened until nightfall.

Thus, the genin went shopping. Naruto, thrilled to have money, expanded his wardrobe beyond his collection of multicolored jumpsuits, and picked up a set of higher-quality kunai. He also, on Kiba's recommendation, purchased a light set of body armor to wear under his clothes. The Inuzuka genin had been on several combat missions while Team Seven was in the Land of Waves, and his own set of armor had saved his skin twice, once by deflecting a bandit's spear thrust, and once by stopping a volley of shuriken that could have caused him serious harm. After a long argument, Naruto and Sasuke convinced Sakura to buy some armor as well, and update her closets with reinforced clothing better suited for combat than her civilian garb. She chose heavier and more obvious protection, reasoning that with her hair color she would stand out in a crowd either way. Besides, the light, interlocking, steel plates and mail separating her vital organs from any pointy objects that might be around were extremely comforting, especially after her embarrassing wardrobe malfunction during Kakashi's test, and Naruto's wounds from Haku's senbon attacks. Not everyone had a demon-enhanced healing rate to take care of flesh wounds. Naturally, she had the cloth coverings dyed the same red as her civilian clothes, but the boys couldn't complain about that. If ninja in the Warring Clans period before Konoha was founded wore that color, and Naruto could be sneaky in his bright orange jumpsuits, then it was hardly a disadvantage, right? Sasuke distained armor, trusting the superior reflexes granted by the sharingan to defend him, but did splurge on a simple katana made with chakra-conductive metal. As the sole heir to the extensive Uchiha estate, he could certainly afford it, and Kakashi had recommended a blade to help his lightning techniques. The chakra-conductive weapon would hold a charge for longer and more efficiently than ordinary steel, if not as well as Kakashi's inherited blade. Not to be outdone, Naruto immediately decided to learn to use a sword too. Unable to afford a real blade, he purchased a sturdy bokken instead.

Once he judged them sufficiently recovered, but long before the genin would have liked, Kakashi returned them to their old, punishing routine, with added supplemental training. Just because their lives were no longer in danger was no reason to slack off elemental jutsu drills, and if Sasuke and Naruto wanted a sword, they had better learn to use it properly!

After a flurry of favor-trading, Kakashi convinced Asuma to teach Naruto wind-style ninjutsu, in exchange for tutoring Asuma's students in earth-style techniques. All three of them had an affinity for earth, an element Asuma never used. Naruto wasn't sure what to think of his laid-back, chain-smoking new teacher at first, but quickly warmed to the jonin once the demon vessel learned a new jutsu, Wind Style: Air Bullets. A smaller and more precise version of the Great Breakthrough jutsu Naruto already knew, air bullets can be used in tight spaces or near teammates with much less chance of friendly fire or collateral damage. Naruto also learned how to make explosive seals from Kakashi, and quickly built up a mildly alarming arsenal. With his immense reserves and eye for detail, the jinchuriki could manufacture dozens of them every day, and he only got faster at making them with practice. After a few experiments-gone-wrong, the Hokage ordered Naruto to move from his apartment to a well-maintained and spacious shed that had reliable amenities, was far larger and cheaper to rent than his old home, and most importantly, was far, far away from any other buildings. Naruto, naturally, was clueless as to the Hokage's true reasons for forcing the move, and thanked Danzo profusely for his generosity in improving the demon vessel's living conditions. The Hokage, meanwhile, appreciated the merciful, heavenly silence, as the civilians were no longer complaining about explosions in the middle of the night driving up insurance rates and lowering property values.

Sakura also received a supplemental teacher. Kakashi introduced her to one of his old teammates from his ANBU days, back before the black-ops division was reformed in the wake of the Uchiha massacre. Tenzo was formerly Kakashi's second in command, but had risen significantly through the ranks since then, to become the commander of Konoha's military police. The Uchiha clan had run the military police since Konoha's founding, and when the clan was annihilated by Sasuke's brother, Itachi, the organization was nearly shut down. The Hokage solved the problem by transferring the most of the then-current ANBU to the military police, filling the ANBU vacancies with ninja from his personal guard. Aside from being the police chief, Tenzo's main claim to fame was that he was one of the few survivors of a kekkei genkai restoration project.

The sannin are a trio of extremely powerful S-ranked ninja trained by the Third Hokage, widely seen as three of the strongest ninja Konoha has ever produced. Tsunade, the greatest living medic-ninja, Jiraiya, one of the last living sealing masters and an infamous peeping Tom, and Orochimaru, a formidable ninjutsu expert. Orochimaru was and is also highly interested in the sciences, especially the study of biology and the mechanics of chakra and ninjutsu. He performed experiments to try to grant ordinary people powerful kekkei genkai techniques, either lost to the ages or belonging to other villages, with mixed results. Sometimes, his process worked wonders, as it did with Tenzo, granting him the powerful wood style kekkei genkai, the only other known user of which was the First Hokage, at least until Sakura's abilities were discovered. Sometimes, the subject died horribly, as most of Tenzo's fellow experiments did. Due to the high mortality rate, Orochimaru began kidnapping civilian and ninja children for use as test subjects, until he was caught a few years after the nine-tailed fox's attack and forced to flee with his apprentice and several hostages in tow. Unfortunately, Orochimaru wrote his notes in a highly complex code, which resisted all efforts to crack it, and no one knew how many experiments he'd left among the village's youth. Sakura, probably, was a member of one of his later groups, from when he'd refined the process to keep the death rate down. Why the twisted sannin had snuck into the hospital or the Haruno home and given a random civilian baby one of the most powerful kekkei genkai in existence was anyone's guess.

Whatever their origins, Tenzo was the only person alive who could teach Sakura to use her abilities, and even he admitted that his knowledge and power was nothing next to what the First Hokage had been capable of. Still, he was happy to pass on what he knew, and if Sakura was skeptical of the usefulness of being able to make plants grow really, really fast, she kept her opinions to herself.

Sasuke, meanwhile, received his extra instruction from Kakashi himself. The Hatake clan was once famous for their skills with a blade, and even though Kakashi himself preferred his short tanto, he was quite capable of teaching Sasuke and Naruto to use their new weapons, and in Sasuke's case channel lightning techniques through it for extra reach. He taught the Uchiha a new sharingan technique as well. While copying ninjutsu requires a fully mastered sharingan to do in the heat of battle, a genjutsu can be redirected towards its caster with a sharingan of any level, and Sasuke drove himself to master this technique. He knew that his brother was a renowned genjutsu expert, so the broody genin needed every trick he could get to break illusions. Sasuke also took great satisfaction in the fact that he had far more talent with a sword than Naruto, easily defeating the blonde in most sparring matches even without using his special eyes,

Thus it came to pass that the three genin of team seven were walking home after team training early one evening when they stumbled upon a highly unusual trio. Two of them looked about the same age as Naruto, the oldest member of team seven, a boy and a girl. (Having failed the graduation exam twice before passing, Naruto had a few years on his classmates). The girl had blonde hair, tied up into four spiky bunches, and wore a loose-fitting purple dress. She carried a massive war fan taller than she was slung over one shoulder, and looked at her companion with impatience and a bit of disgust. The boy, or at least they assumed he was by the sound of his voice, was more heavily armored than anyone they had ever seen before, even more than the fire daimyo's samurai. Every inch of the boy's tall, bulky body was covered in thick plates of a silvery metal, which clanked softly as he moved. To protect himself from the sun, and presumably prevent enemies from spotting him with the reflected light, he wore a dark cloak over his armor. A pair of scrolls filled a holster on his left thigh, and unusually for a ninja, he carried no holster for kunai or shuriken on his right. Both the boy's forehead armor and the girl's headband were etched with an hourglass symbol, the symbol of the village hidden in the sand, Sunagakure. The boy was holding a smaller kid, dark of hair, maybe seven years old, about the throat with one hand, lifting him with casual, intimidating strength.

"Hey, kid. You really oughtta watch where you're going," even the sand ninja's voice sounded armored, as it resonated with a metallic tone, "Otherwise you could run into… trouble." Team seven got the impression that he was leering at the younger boy, although they couldn't see the ninja's face under his featureless visor. His female companion assumed a mildly reproachful expression.

"Kankuro, just drop it. Er, him." She gave an aristocratic sniff, "This is totally beneath us, and besides, we don't want to cause trouble. We just got here. And there are witnesses."

"So what?" the armored ninja chuckled, "We're just having a bit of fun here. Right, kid?" The kid looked like he was about to cry, but stared defiantly at his captor, baring his gap-filled teeth. Sakura smirked as she recognized the kid. Oh, that poor metal-plated idiot. He should have listened to his friend.

"Don't you know who that is?" she asked the sand ninja with a superior expression, "That's Sarutobi Konohamaru. You know, the Third Hokage's grandson? The Fifth Hokage's godson? That Konohamaru? Drop him right now, and we might not report you. You wouldn't want to annoy Lord Hokage, would you?" The sand ninja with a visible face went white as a sheet, and her companion dropped Konohamaru like a hot coal. People who annoyed the Hokage had an alarming tendency to disappear, and show up months or years later with an utterly unshakable devotion to Konohagakure, when they came back at all.

"Ummm, I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding. And we're sorry. Really, really sorry, ok?" The girl made a rapid apology. Kankuro nodded so rapidly that his clanking transformed into an obnoxious squeaking noise, forcing him to oil his neck with annoyed body language. "Please don't report us? I like my brains unwashed. Quite attached, really."

"Kankuro, Temari, shut up," grated a voice from behind the sand ninja. While team seven and the pair of foreigners had been talking, a third ninja from Suna had walked up behind his countryman (and woman). He was significantly shorter than they were, and wore dark, heavy robes. His hair was dull red, and thick, black circles surrounded his pale eyes. He had the kanji for love tattooed on his temple, and carried a heavy, sandy gourd on his back. "You're a disgrace to our village. Cause problems, and I'll kill you." His voice sounded rough, as though he'd been inhaling sand his whole life.

"We're not," protested the girl, presumably named Temari, "Honest. We're all friends here. Right, guys?" She turned a pleading, plastered-on grin toward the Konoha genin, eyes wide.

"That remains to be seen," Sasuke could care less about the sand ninjas' issues, "Foreign ninja can't be allowed to run free in Konoha. Unless you can prove you have a legal reason to be here, I'm certain ANBU will have some questions for you. Pointed questions."

"You mean you don't know?" Temari resumed her haughty attitude, holding up her passport, "The chunin exams are in Konoha this year. You can't be promoted unless you've been in at least one, and if you do well, you could get promoted on the spot."

"Maybe I should enter this exam thing dattebayo!" Naruto ignored the sand ninja completely, giving Sakura a sly grin, "When I win, will you go out with me?"

"This is so not the time!" Sakura kicked Naruto in the shin, causing him to wail in protest and faked pain.

"They're idiots," the redhead observed, "Kankuro, Temari, we're leaving. Now." As he turned, however, his face spasmed in discomfort, and he doubled over, hands clutching at his tattoo. Kankuro and Temari took several quiet, cautious steps back. "Yesss, mother," the third boy muttered, "I will." He turned back to the Konoha genin, eyes wide, face twitching. "Your names?"

"You first," Sasuke responded shortly. The odd boy considered this for a second, and then shrugged.

"Gaara of the desert," he rasped, hands jerking toward his tattoo again.

"Uchiha Sasuke," the broody genin reciprocated.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage dattebayo!" Naruto almost completely dispelled the tension in the air with his words, "Better remember it!"

"Haruno Sakura. Um, pleased to meet you?" team seven's lone girl finished, feeling somehow diminished next to her teammates' confidence.

"Uzumaki. Uchiha." Gaara had regained his calm, "Mother wants your blood. She must have it," And the tension was back. He turned his dead gaze to Sakura, "and she says you smell… nice." He considered this for a second. "I don't think I want to kill you." With those parting words, he turned on his heel and plodded away. Temari and Kankuro stared at Sakura with undisguised desperation.

"Please tell me you use some kind of perfume? Or scented soap? Or something?" Temari begged, "Seriously, just tell us what it is. We'll do anything. Anything!"

"I- I- I don't wanna die," added Kankuro, "Please!" Sakura felt sorry for them, but…

"I don't use anything like that," she answered sadly, "I haven't since I became a ninja, almost four months ago. I'm sorry, but I don't think I can help you."

"Aww, man. We're gonna die," the armored boy visibly wilted, "I gotta finish my masterpiece before Gaara gets me. Gotta leave something for the future, like sensei always says."

"Her clothes were dyed recently," Temari grasped at straws, "Maybe if we… Kankuro, how would you look in red?" Still plotting ways to improve their odor, the sand ninja wandered off.

"You know, at first I thought they were vicious, dangerous enemies," Sasuke observed, "but now I kind of feel sorry for them."

The next day, team seven met Kakashi on a bridge near Naruto's shed, for an early mission. Naturally, he turned up about two hours after the meeting time he'd set. "Hello, my cute little genin," he greeted, "Have I got a surprise for you!" Sasuke promptly substituted with a civilian passerby, and tried to loose himself in the crowd. Naruto generated a dozen doppelgangers as a smokescreen, which all ran off in different directions, including the original. Sakura threw up a layered dome of walls of earth and stone around her, then used the hiding like a mole jutsu to vanish underground and flee through Konoha's storm drains. Kakashi's surprises were rarely welcome or pleasant. It took the mildly irritated jonin nearly thirty minutes to track down and capture his fleeing students, and restrain them well enough that they couldn't escape again.

"Don't be like that," he lectured his captives, "I'm actually doing something nice for you, honest." The genin grunted something that could have meant almost anything. It was hard to tell, as Kakashi had needed to mummify them in rope and ninja wire to hold them in place. "Now," he negotiated, "If I let you up, will you at least hear what I have to say before you try to escape again?" Upon hearing a vaguely affirmative grunt, the jonin carefully untied his rebellious students. "I've decided to enter you three in the chunin exams. Now, I don't expect you to win," he qualified, "After all, you've barely been genin for six months, even if you have improved a lot in the time. However, the chunin exams are also a great way to gain experience, and meet and fight ninja from other villages. Since the exams are in Konoha this time, they'll be as safe as they ever are. The only place with a better death rate is Hidden Rain, and only because their security is insanely tight, even by ninja standards. Either they're impressively paranoid, or they're hiding something big, and since they're a minor village and possibly in the middle of a civil war, I'm inclined toward the first choice. The exams will give you valuable combat experience, and if by some chance you do get promoted, well… I've only ever taught green ANBU before, and I can't take you drinking like I did when one of my ANBU subordinates got promoted, but I'm sure I'll think of some way to celebrate." Suddenly, several things about Kakashi's incredibly difficult teaching methods became clearer. If he'd only ever taught ANBU before, then he was probably using the same methods on his genin he'd used with them. Surviving a watered-down ANBU training course fresh out of the academy, now that was something the genin of team seven could be proud of. "So, if you want to enter, fill out these forms," Kakashi held up a set of paperwork, "And go to the Hashirama Memorial Theatre by eight o'clock the day after tomorrow. Not sure why they're holding it there instead of the Konoha academy, like usual, but they'll probably explain when you get there. The theatre is bigger than the academy's lecture halls, so maybe they have more applicants than usual."

Naruto received his entry form with awe, holding it like it was made of precious metal. Or, considering his personality, more like it was made of ramen. "I love you, Kakashi-sensei!" he suddenly exclaimed, leaping forward and hugging the jonin, crushing the older man's face into his chest and muffling Kakashi's protests. While Kakashi tried to dislodge Naruto, who had a grip like a limpet, Sakura and Sasuke slowly sidled away from the goofier pair, both thinking something along the lines of "We're not with them."

On the appointed day, an hour early, Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto entered the theatre together, turning their entry forms in to a bored-looking chunin whose only distinguishing feature was a strap of leather wrapped around his face at nose height. He waved the three inside to a spacious lobby packed with genin from all over the world. In the space of a few minutes, Sakura recognized headbands from Kirigakure, the village hidden in the clouds (Kumogakure), Amegakure, Sunagakure, the village hidden in the grass (Kusagakure), and of course Konoha.

"Hey! Naruto! Sakura! Sasuke! How's it goin?" Whirling at the sudden attention, team seven saw their old classmates in team ten, Kiba, Hinata, and Shino, approaching out of the crowd. "Can't say I ain't surprised to see y'all here," Kiba continued, a fanged grin on his face, "but I can't say I ain't glad to see some friendly faces, either. There's some real weirdoes here. I swear one of those Kumo ninjas wanted to eat Akamaru. He smelled… hungry. Can ya believe it?" From his perch on Kiba's head, Akamaru threw in his two cents with an enthusiastic bark.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Naruto taunted his friend, "I mean, we did take down an A-ranked missing-nin after all. What've you done these past months dattebayo?"

"Yeah, heard about that," Kiba acknowledged, "Pranking a former jonin. Moving up in the world, eh, Naruto? But I also heard that when you three took on his apprentice, Sakura did all the heavy lifting. Eh? Eh?" Naruto clutched his heart in mock agony, while Sakura looked chagrined and Sasuke mumbled something that sounded vaguely like "I helped too."

"Er, I'm sure Naruto was very helpful," Hinata defended, "He is very strong and brave and-"

"You'll invite me to the wedding, right?" Kiba teased, drawing out a loud EEP! from his teammate. Her silver eyes glazed over she repeated her Naruto Mantra in her head: must not faint must not faint must not faint.

"Kiba, you jerk!" Naruto exclaimed, "Don't pick on Hinata dattebayo! You know she won't fight back! That's not fair!"

"Hey, you really oughtta keep it down," an amused voice came from behind Kiba. The voice belonged to another Konoha genin, who none of the rookies had ever seen before. He had silver hair, just like Kakashi, and round glasses balanced on his nose. Aside from that, he mostly wore the standard Konoha uniform, although he had a red and white field medic patch on either shoulder. "Things are tense here, and a lot of the foreigners have really short fuses. You should try to be quieter, before someone snaps and beats the crap out of you, like those Rain ninjas over there." The genin followed the newcomer's thumb to a trio of ninja wearing Amegakure's symbol of four parallel, vertical bars. The red-haired, spectacled kunoichi of the group was giggling quietly at something a taller, scarred genin had said, while their dark-haired, dark-eyed third teammate watched them with a faint smile. One would be hard-pressed to find a less aggressive-looking team in the entire room.

"Was that a joke, Mr… ?" Sakura hazarded, realizing she didn't know his name.

"Oh, I'm sorry, my name's Kabuto. Yakushi Kabuto, medic-in-training," the silver-haired genin introduced himself, "And yes, I was joking. Glad you noticed. My friends at the hospital say I have no sense of humor, so I have begun an epic quest: I will become funny!" He grinned at them, "So what did you think? Was I any good? Are you amused?" He pulled out what looked suspiciously like a data table attached to a clipboard and a pen. "Could you rate my joke on a scale of one to ten, ten being the funniest thing you've ever heard and one being a total flop? It's for science, so be honest."

"Is this a joke too?" asked Kiba suspiciously.

"Why? Is it funny?" For a ninja, Kabuto lacked guile.

"Funnier than the joke," Kiba grumped. Kabuto began writing furiously on his clipboard, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like high-level math. "I think you might be taking this a bit too seriously, man. Being funny isn't a science. It's more like art, like painting, or something."

"Aesthetic appeal can be quantified," reasoned Kabuto, "And it is an art. Therefore, nothing prevents me from quantifying humor as well. I will succeed. I must succeed."

"While your determination to succeed is… admirable," Sakura thought he might be a little crazy, but she wasn't about to go out and say it. Often, the ecentricity and power as a ninja were proportional, as Kakashi proved all too well. "Did you have any other reason to want to talk to us? We'd like to make sure we get good seats."

"As a matter of fact, I did," Kabuto smiled again, "I've been doing this for quite a bit longer than you have, the exams I mean, and it's rare for rookies to enter. I'd hate to see you all die, so I thought I'd offer you a chance to take advantage of the intelligence I've gathered during my attempts at promotion." Everyone but Naruto immediately recognized the value of what Kabuto was offering; information is always extremely valuable to a ninja of any rank.

"Well, why don't you tell us what you wished you knew the first time you entered?" Sakura asked. That seemed like a good place to start.

"Huh," Kabuto rocked back on his heels, "I wasn't expecting such an insightful question. Lemme think for a second… Well, the first thing to know is that the exam is divided into three stages. Stage one is always a mental test. They'll look at your ability to think under pressure, react to a difficult situation, academic abilities, intelligence gathering, infiltration skills, all that and more. So, you'll have to be smart if you want to get through. The second test is usually about teamwork and survival, and they often have the teams compete in a combat situation of some sort. Konoha used to use training ground sixty-six for that, until some overenthusiastic Suna genin burned most of it down with the scorch-style kekkei genkai during my first exam, so I don't know where it'll be this year. But, you get hurt, come see me. I can always use the practice. The final test, they break up the teams and stage a tournament, the parameters of which change each year. My personal favorite was that exam in Hidden Rain two years ago, where they teamed you up with two people from other villages for the final tournament. Their leader always speaks through messengers, but I'm pretty sure he thought it was hilarious. They always change the specifics of the tests, so I can't give you any more than that."

"Can you give us specifics on a single person?" questioned Sasuke.

"Maybe, if I've seen them in action or they're pretty famous already," Kabuto replied easily, "Who do you have in mind?"

"Gaara of the desert," Naruto and Sasuke stated in chorus.

"He threatened to kill us for no reason dattebayo!" Naruto added hotly.

"Gaara, huh," Kabuto whistled in appreciation, "That's a nasty guy. To be on his hit list already… I mean, he's a rookie too, from another village, and I still recognize his name. I don't know much about his abilities, but he's left a trail of bodies across Suna. The only people who he seems to tolerate near him are his jonin-sensei Baki, and his teammates, who are also his older siblings. Temari, the oldest, is supposed to be a wind-style prodigy of some kind, and Kankuro, the middle sibling, is the personal apprentice of Sasori of the Red Sand himself, one of the greatest ninja puppet-masters to ever live. To top it all off, all three of them are the children of the Kazekage, the leader of hidden sand, so they likely get special training and equipment. It's a stacked team, for sure. I'd say, if you meet up with them during the second test, your best bet is to run like hell. It's what I'd do, anyway. I saw them pass through here a short while ago, and all three of them are carrying heavy gear, between Kankuro's armor and his man-sized combat puppets if he's using them, Temari's fan, and Gaara's gourd. They probably can't run for very long without getting tired, carrying all that. If you get assigned one of them in the third test, well, you get a month between the second and third tests to heal and prepare, so you might have a chance."

"Damn," Sasuke had known Gaara was tough, but he'd had no idea the other two were just as dangerous. To think Kankuro and Temari had almost fooled him with that comedy act. He'd not make the same mistake again, "I think we'd better follow that advice, and if we get past the second task, train like mad. Maybe sensei would teach us some A or B-ranked ninjutsu if he heard we had to fight someone like that. We'd need it, just to survive."

"Probably oughtta go in now, if you really want good seats," Kabuto suggested, "And sit with your team. Unless they specifically tell you not to, you want to keep the people you trust close by." With that parting bit of advice he turned and walked toward the entrance to the theatre. With a shrug, the rookie genin followed, selecting spots near the center of the huge room, noting that the six rows at the front of the theatre were roped off.

At precisely eight, two files of Konoha chunin wearing white uniforms walked in and sat in the farthest of the roped-off rows, followed by an assortment of adult ninja who filled in the other open seats, and a huge man stepped out from behind the curtains onstage. He was pale, his face covered in thick, ropy scars, and he dressed all in black. Black shirt, black pants, black trench coat, black gloves, black bandana. He completed his look with a set of garish Marti-Gras beads, a pink floral lei, and a black ukulele decorated with a pattern of flaming skulls. He looked as though he had smiled exactly once in his life: right now. "Listen up, you maggots! My name is Morino Ibiki, proctor of the first exam. For as long as you are within these walls, my word is law," he punctuated this statement with a dissonant strum of the ukulele. "Look under your seats, worms. Each team should have a number underneath one teammate. Keep track of it; it's the order you'll take the exam in. Now," the ghoulish grin got wider, "I'm sure you all are wondering what the test will be, so let me satisfy your curiosity now. The first test of the chunin selection exams will be: A talent show!" When the genin all started shouting at once, Ibiki did something with a microphone attached to his lapel that produced an earsplitting screech of feedback to cut through the clamor. "Quiet, maggots! I'm not done talking yet! Because I don't feel the regular judges would make this awkward enough, I've invited your jonin-sensei, any visiting Kage, the Hokage and his advisors, and any other foreign dignitaries around to attend, in addition to your competition, who will be in the audience, watching your every move on stage. You will have no time to prepare except for while you watch the other contestants perform. If you are caught using chakra techniques by our chunin proctors, you will receive a significantly reduced score. There are no other questions at this time, so, against my better judgement, allow me to introduce our MCs for this event, Konoha jonin Might Gai, and Kumo jonin Killer Bee. No one else wanted the job."

An explosion of white smoke obscured the center of the stage, giving Ibiki cover to sidle out of view mostly unnoticed. Slowly, as the smoke cleared, two figures became visible in sillouette. The one on the left leaped out of the smoke, grinning and posing, thumb raised with pride. The man was clad in a green spandex one-piece, which clashed violently with the orange arm and leg-warmers he wore. A pair of nunchaku were belted about his waist with a Konoha headband, which also clashed violently with his spandex. Actually, pretty much anything would have clashed violently with that spandex. His hair was styled into a shiny, black bowl-cut, and his eyebrows were easily an inch thick. "Ah, it's so good to be here," he exclaimed in a boisterous voice, "Might Gai, number one MC! I look forward to a YOUTHFUL performance from all of you!" The man's smile practically glowed in the dark, shining across the almost silent theatre. Nearly everyone stared at him in silence, except for a single Konoha genin wearing identical clothes and hair who cheered wildly at his appearance.

The second silhouette, not to be outdone, barreled out of the smoke, also posing, with a single hand raised above his head in the universal "rock on" symbol. He was almost as odd-looking as Gai, his dark skin contrasting with his white Kumo headband and flak jacket held up by a single strap. He had several tattoos on his arms and face, carried seven swords sheathed across his back, and wore black sunglasses despite the dim lighting in the theatre. "Hey, yo, I'm the number one MC, da rappin Killa Bee, wheeeeee! Can hardly wait, to decide your fate!" The two jonin glared daggers at each other as every single genin from Kumo screamed in support, lightning flickering from one face to the other. Apparently they hadn't consulted over who was 'number one'. "Team number one, show 'em how it's done. My fella MC and me, we got things to discuss, don't raise a fuss!" Killer Bee vanished in another burst of smoke.

"My YOUTHFUL companion and I indeed have much to discuss," Gai agreed, "So go, chunin candidates! Use the power of your YOUTH!" Gai too vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving the stage for a clearly shell-shocked team from Kusagakure to face the crowd.

"They're all insane. All three of them," Sasuke shook his head, torn between incredulity, and disgust, "What does any of this have to do with being a ninja, anyway? What a waste of time. Here I thought the chunin exams were supposed to mean something."

"I agree completely, Sasuke," Sakura would have gone along with anything the Uchiha said, but in this case she didn't have to fake it, "This is just stupid! How is this relevant to anything?" Naruto, however, treated his teammates to an extremely smug expression, like a fox in a henhouse. "What, Naruto!?"

"I'm just enjoying the moment dattebayo," the demon vessel giggled, "This doesn't happen too much after all, but I know something you don't."

"I doubt it," Sasuke wasn't about to believe something that far-fetched, but there was a chance… "But spill it anyway, idiot." Naruto ignored the insult.

"Think about it. You're supposed to be the smart ones here," Naruto mocked, before turning serious, "Kabuto said the first exam is a mental test, right?" At the confused nods he received from his teammates, Naruto continued to explain, "Well, lots of ninjas are great at fightin', but not so good at other stuff. Yanno, blending in with people who aren't ninjas. Just look at those nutty MC guys. Ibiki said you can't use ninja techniques, unless you can do it really sneaky-like, like you'd do on an infil- infli- stealth mission dattebayo! Then he picks those wacky guys to help run things, and puts pressure on us by having important people watch. He wants to make the people who can't improvise, or keep their cool, or act like regular people fail. But we've got smart people, so we're not gonna fall for it, right dattebayo?"

"We almost did," Sakura analyzed, "Wow, that Ibiki guy is good. He steered our thinking like a pro. I'd bet my next paycheck he works in torture and interrogation. Ibiki wants us to think of this like a waste of time, even though it isn't. I bet lots of people aren't going to realize his point, and they won't take this seriously. But, a ninja has to complete every mission to the best of her abilities, whether it's' babysitting or assassination. If they blow this off, they'll have ignored one of the fundamental principles of being a ninja, and fail for sure."

"But what do we do, then?" Sasuke wasn't panicking, but he was feeling nervous. After all, "You come from a civilian family, Sakura, so you at least have some experience with this sort of thing, before you opted out of civilian school to join the academy, but Naruto and I, we don't have the faintest idea what to do here," the broody genin ploughed over Naruto's protests that he did in fact have some idea of how a talent show worked, "I mean, I, sort of, um, don't have any hobbies outside of training, and we're specifically supposed to not be ninja, you know…"

"Seriously? Sasuke, man, you really need to get a life dattebayo," Naruto felt pity for his high-achieving teammate for the first time since the Uchiha had lost his family, "but you do have one hobby, at least. Isn't kendo a civilian thing too? I mean, we can't just have a match, 'cause we need to include Sakura too, but I've got an idea for that too. I saw the new film by Akira Kurosawa in the theatre a few days ago, you know, the famous samurai drama guy? _Throne of Blood_ I think it was called, and I may have watched the film ten times 'cause it's really awesome… But I memorized one of the cool fight scenes, and we could totally act it out… we're already kind of dressed for the part, if we shift our clothes and my armor around a bit, so you'd just have to learn the lines. It'll be cool, trust me dattebayo!"

While they prepared, team seven was forced to sit through a wide range of acts, both good, and terrible. Gaara and his team, in traditional Suna fashion, staged a short puppet show using Kankuro's old toys, passing because using weak chakra strings to manipulate small, simple puppets is common even in civilian theatre; nearly anyone can do it. The team from hidden rain Kabuto had pointed out put on a surprisingly good slapstick comedy skit that almost got Sasuke to smile slightly, and Kabuto himself put on an equally good comedy act, although his team was funny only in ways they didn't intend. Team ten turned out to all be musical, and improvised a passable instrumental trio, having stored their instruments inside storage seals for safekeeping. When team seven's turn came up, the three genin gave reenacting their best effort. Naruto used his bokken, Sasuke secured the sheath over his katana with its strap, and Sakura used wood style to grow a bokken of her own for use during the test in the dark of the theatre, when no one could see. While their acting would never win any awards, none of them seized up with stage fright or gave themselves away as ninja, which turned out to be enough for a passing grade. In the end, a little over half the genin flunked out, many due to blatant and pointless cheating or lack of any skills or creativity outside of a fight. There was no real point in sabotaging another team's act, because passing or failing had nothing to do with the quality of the performance, and the act of sabotage risked outing the saboteur as a ninja. This did nothing to stop some people from trying anyway.

The passing genin gathered again at noon to hear about the second test, run by a jonin named Shiranui Genma who neither team seven, team ten, nor Kabuto had met before. The unflappable jonin constantly worried a senbon needle in his teeth, but aside from that didn't react to any of the chunin hopefuls' antics as he explained the rules of the second test.

"Howdy, y'all, my name's Shiranui Genma, proctor of the second exam. Any ladies over eighteen out there probably want ta write that down, so I'll give 'em a few seconds," the jonin ignored that every single kunoichi (except Hinata) in the genin group had to be restrained from attacking him by their male teammates, "Anyway, the second exam. We used to always do a wilderness survival exercise in the no longer aptly named forest of death, but some moron torched it last time, so we're gonna do something else. Also, I should probably let y'all know that this year, you're gonna have to be careful about that sort of thing, order of the Hokage. We catch you makin' excessive collateral damage or hurtin' civilians, and we will catch you, you'll be immediately disqualified, no questions asked, and no appeal. Now then, each team is gonna get either a heaven scroll or an earth scroll," Genma held up two scrolls, one brown and one white, "But you need to deliver both to the Hokage tower to make it to the final test. So I think alla you can see what's gonna hafta happen for you to pass. The only other rules are that you can't leave Konoha's walls until the test is over, and if you reveal to any civvies that a bunch of ninjas are running around fighting over scrolls, you get disqualified, just like if you cause too much property damage, understand? So go pick up your scroll at one of the screened booths over there, and we'll assign you your starting position. Test begins in two hours, and ends five days from now. If you haven't delivered a set of scrolls by then, you fail. So get movin!"

Team seven received a heaven scroll, which Sakura secured inside her armor, and the genin travelled to their starting point, near Naruto's beloved Ichiraku Ramen. So of course he had to stop for a bowl. Or ten. However, they didn't have much luck finding victims to steal a scroll from. The only other contestant they ran into on the first day was a lone genin from Ame, who badly impersonated Naruto before being beaten into a pulp by Sasuke and Sakura. However, he hadn't brought his scroll along, so they tied him up, left him stuffed in a dumpster under a genjutsu, and continued on.

That night, team seven holed up in Naruto's apartment, surrounded by booby-traps, to plan their next move, get some rest, and contemplate the big questions in life. Such as: "Naruto?" Sakura addressed her teammate, "I've been wondering for a while now. Why are you always saying 'dattebayo'? And what the heck does it mean?"

"Uh, well, I haven't told this to a lotta people, just Kiba and Hinata, and I think Kakashi-sensei probably already knows, so you gotta promise me you won't tell anyone, ok?" Naruto reluctantly said. At Sakura and Sasuke's bemused nods, the jinchuriki continued his explanation, "I- The lady at the orphanage I was in 'till I entered the academy, who taught me to talk, she'd… She met my mother once before my parents died. The lady didn't remember much about my mother, not even her name, only that she always said 'dattebane' after her sentences sometimes, when she was excited or trying to make a point. It's the only thing I know for sure about my parents, so… I, well, I decided to try to talk like her, but in my own way, you know? It just… felt right, I guess." Both Sasuke and Sakura stared at their friend in shock; who knew Naruto of all people had hidden depths?

"Uh, we should probably try to get some rest," Sasuke offered. What could he say, after a revelation like that? He'd always assumed that Naruto's quirky speech was part of some prank, or just to annoy people. "We're going to have a busy day tomorrow, tracking down people with an earth scroll." He had no idea how painfully accurate that statement would turn out to be.

The next day, Naruto predictably dragged his teammates back to Ichiraku's for breakfast. The other two genin put up a token protest, but although they ate there a lot, neither Sasuke nor Sakura had any real complaints. The reasons Naruto practically lived off ramen had become a lot clearer after their first bowl of Ichiraku Sr's specialty; the tiny, often-overlooked shop was one of the best restaurants in the village. The genin chatted amicably as they waited for service, and soon enough Ichiraku Ayame, the owner and chef's daughter, came to take their orders, pork for Sasuke and Sakura, and a massive order of miso for Naruto. All completely routine; the team came in with a similar order at least twice a week. So, it came as a complete surprise to Ichiraku Sr. when Ayame went to deliver team seven's food and was met by a squad of hardened warriors rather than the (slightly goofy) kids they had come to know.

"Wha- What the hell are you doing?" astonished old man exclaimed, "Have you gone crazy? Get away from my daughter!"

Sasuke, holding his sword to the back of the waitress's neck, showed no intention of doing so. "I'd be happy to, if I thought this was Ayame. She flinched a little when Naruto ordered fifteen bowls. The real Ayame wouldn't have been surprised at all, and if she was, she wouldn't have covered it up like a master. This is an imposter."

"Whoever it is got the gait right," Sakura analyzed, "But they couldn't change their weight. Her footfalls sounded a little heavy. This is a taller person under the transformation jutsu."

"Plus, she hasn't blinked once," Naruto put the last nail in the imposter's coffin, "That's just creepy dattebayo! Who does that?"

Ayame straightened up with a crack of shifting bones, as though someone else was wearing her skin, and quirked her mouth into a thin, predatory smile. "So that was it, huh," she mused without concern, as though being held at swordpoint was as routine as going to the barber, "Always trips me up, remembering to blink." With those words, the person wearing the face of Ichiraku Ayame, the nice civilian girl who had taken pity on an underfed orphan six years ago, giving Naruto his first taste of home-cooked food, released killing intent.

Zabuza's killing intent had paralyzed the three genin, leaving them barely conscious. The three had assumed that their experience against the assassin from hidden mist was as bad as killing intent could get; even Itachi hadn't had such a malevolent presence. But, Zabuza's manifest will was a wavering shadow at midday next to the imposter's oppressive darkness. All three genin dropped their weapons from instantly nerveless hands, clutching at their chests that logic screamed could not possibly have been impaled on a sword, as their enemy hadn't moved a muscle. The lone civilian's eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed, grasping over his heart and twitching. To complete the effect, the hands on the swords that could not possibly be there still belonged to a smiling, cheerful Ayame. Killing intent alone couldn't possibly do something like this, could it?

If possible, the imposter's smile grew even wider, displaying strangely… pointed canines. The monster, for nothing else could describe her in the genin's minds, sized up her would-be captors like a poisonous snake looks at the puppy who has caught her by the tail. "Is this really it? This is the best you can do? Kukukukuku," the imposter tilted her head in a strangely reptilian fashion, "I imagine poor Naruto's father is turning over in his grave right now, that his son would give up on life so easily… And little Sasuke… What would Itachi say to a pathetic little mouse like you? With the both of you hanging around with a useless piece of civilian trash… And unable to even beg for your miserable lives. How… delicious. Who shall I end first, I wonder…" The person wearing Ayame's appearance ran a slow hand over Sakura's immobilized face with obvious relish. "Perhaps the useless one?"

Naruto suddenly found himself again, only to double over in pain, hands clutching at his stomach while the imposter looked on impassively. "Hurts. Burns," the boy whimpered uncharacteristically. Normally, it would take being impaled to get Naruto to even admit he was in pain. "What is…? All red. Hurts. Nuuuuuhh. So much… Kill you!" Subsiding into an incoherent scream, the jinchuriki lunged at the imposter, hands locked like claws. His target simply swayed back from the first wild swing, before slamming the berserk genin into Sasuke with a smooth throw.

"So this is the power of the nine-tailed fox?" analyzed the imposter, "It seems that fear, or maybe rage, loosen the seal, allowing a little of the demon's power to seep through. But with that power comes the demon's will, as well, and the little fox loses his wits." She paused to dodge a few more attacks from the possessed genin, before twisting Naruto's arms behind his back and pinning him against the counter. "Power without direction is worse than useless. You will never defeat anyone like this," she continued with disgust, "You'd live longer with more thinking and less screaming."

Naruto countered with a shout so forceful it actually knocked his assailant back several feet, and turned to face her again, red energy bubbling out of his pores, as his blue eyes were subsumed by a feral, red light, pupils elongating into slits. "You won't hurt Sakura!" he yelled, "I'll kill you!" He charged again, and the imposter deflected the telegraphed strikes up with a single bored motion, cutting open Naruto's shirt with a kitchen knife in her other hand, revealing a complex, spiraled sealing jutsu, the nine-tailed fox's prison.

"You weren't listening, were you? All the power in the world is useless without the skill you lack," each fingertip of the imposter's right hand glowed with chakra, "So, you will do without it for a while. Five elements seal!" She slammed the glowing digits into Naruto's stomach, burning five symbols onto the jinchuriki's skin to surround the seal. Naruto immediately slumped, nearly passing out from the sudden loss of power.

Sasuke, meanwhile, electrocuted himself with lightning chakra, focusing on the pain to wall out the paralyzing effects of the killing intent. The rest of it he gathered up with his thoughts on her mention of his brother, and walled away in his mind, into the same place the Uchiha kept the utter despair spawned by the massacre, beside every loving feeling he'd ever had for his brother. He wouldn't deal with this, couldn't right now. Naruto, Sakura, and he were going to die. If he fled, he'd be no better than his brother, killing his teammates as surely as if Sasuke had done it himself; neither Sakura nor Naruto were in any shape to fight back against the monstrous ninja they faced. Sasuke recovered his sword, charging it with stunning lightning chakra, and took a swing at his foe from behind.

The imposter responded by drawing a snake-hilted jian from thin air near her waist, from under the transformation technique Sasuke assumed, and casually parried, her sword also crackling with electricity to counter the Uchiha's technique. Sasuke met her eyes, although he didn't expect his genjutsu to work, and was not disappointed when she ignored it in favor of a series of impossibly fast cuts that Sasuke was barely able to parry or dodge even with the sharingan active. "She's faster than Kakashi-sensei," he muttered with a sort of fatalistic awe, before it occurred to him that if she was that fast, there was no way any genin could have possibly survived the previous attack. She was toying with him! "What do you really want?" Sasuke figured he didn't have anything to lose by asking at this point, "If you wanted to kill us, we'd be dead right now."

"Kukukuku," the imposter found that highly amusing, "Honestly, I haven't decided. Whether you live, whether you die… It all depends. What makes you worth sparing? We'll find out, or you'll die. Either way is no loss to me." Suddenly, she flashed forward, even faster than before, and applied a brutal kick to Sasuke's sternum, sending him through the restaurant's counter as the air fled his lungs. Sasuke occupied with wheezing for oxygen, she turned back to a still-immobile Sakura. "I heard the sharingan gains power when its wielder suffers great loss. Let's see if it's true…" The fearsome ninja slowly slid her sword between Sakura's ribs with obvious relish, drawing a river of blood down the genin's ribs as Sakura... turned into water. The imposter took a quick step back, avoiding a thrust kunai from underground. She made a series of swift half hand signs with a free hand, and Sakura was forcibly thrown from beneath the street with a shocked cry. "Not bad, girl," the imposter complimented, "A doppelganger in motion would never have fooled me. But a doppelganger standing still, not even seen as a threat? You could have defeated most lesser ninja, and at my level just about everyone is a lesser ninja. Still, what will you do now? You used all the water around for that doppelganger, and the earth is now under my control." The imposter pointed her sword at Sakura. "How will you keep the Sword of Kusanagi from finding your heart?" Suddenly, impossibly, the blade of the sword grew, still in line with the pink-haired genin's chest. In desperation, Sakura clasped her hands in a single sign, thrusting all the chakra she dared into a single mental command: grow!

To the surprise of everyone around, a thick and sturdy tree sprouted between Sakura and the imposter, the jian's tip burying itself in the tough plant. The imposter raised a single eyebrow at the display. "Wood style? So that's what happened to one of my old experiments. I must admit, I did not see that coming."

"Your experiments?" Sakura had a sinking feeling that she knew who was impersonating Ayame, but there was only one way to be sure, so "Who are you really?"

"I suppose I can let you know, in exchange for the valuable data," the imposter reached up, grasped her face, and ripped her skin and clothes off, revealing the face underneath the mask. The man underneath the disguise was pale, almost pallid, with long, straight black hair. His eyes were yellow and slit, surrounded by pointed black marks. He wore simple black clothes, underneath a black lab coat bearing a pattern of blood-red clouds, and had the sheath of his jian belted around his waist. "It isn't every day I get to see the results of such a successful experiment. I am Orochimaru. I'm sure you've heard of me."

"If you didn't know Sakura was one of your… experiments, then what do you want from us?" Sasuke questioned. Orochimaru smiled again, licking his lips with a darting tongue.

"Well, since you all survived my attentions, I thought I'd offer you all a job," he explained.

"What?!" Sasuke was flabberghasted, "What possible reason could we have to join up with you?! You killed two of our friends, tried to kill us, betrayed Konoha, murdered hundreds of children; we'd be signing our own obituaries!"

"Killed them? The Ichirakus? I don't think I did," replied the sannin, "I made certain that the old man only got enough killing intent to pass out, and Ayame is fine. What, did you think I'd skinned her or something? I haven't needed to do that for my disguise jutsu in years. I left her at home in a genjutsu. She actually thinks she's at work right now. I would have to be insane to hurt them; three different S-ranked missing-nin have promised a slow, bloody death to anyone who harms the, and I quote, 'best ramen chefs in the elemental nations'. I can count the number of people alive who can legitimately threaten my life on the fingers of both hands, and all three of them are on the list. And if I wanted you three dead, you would be." Orochimaru chuckled again. "As for what I can offer, how about power? You may not admit it, Sasuke, but you know and I know you'll never even put a scratch on Uchiha Itachi at your current rate of development. Konoha cannot make you strong enough. I can."

"I'll never work with someone like you," Naruto declared, "You're a monster."

"Oh really?" Orochimaru disagreed, "What if I told you I could arrange a… meeting, between you, and your mother?"

"That's impossible!" Naruto protested, but he couldn't help some part of him hoping it was true, wondering if accepting the missing-nin's offer would really be so bad.

"Is it?" Orochimaru asked, "I am Orochimaru, the immortal sage of the snakes, the greatest scientist to ever live! I've mastered forbidden jutsu you could never conceive of. Who are you to say with such authority what is possible and what is not? As for you, girl, all I can offer is my sincerest apologies."

"Wait, what?" Sakura felt nonplussed, "Why would someone like you feel the need to apologize to me for anything?"

"Well," the sannin admitted, "Your hair, for one."

"Are you serious?" Sakura couldn't believe her ears, "Are you saying you turned my hair pink? What possible reason would you have for that?!"

"It wasn't me, exactly," Orochimaru grimaced, "In retrospect, it was probably a really bad idea to leave my nine-year-old apprentice alone near irreplaceable biotechnology after she binged on magical girl anime. You know, benefits of hindsight. I didn't know about the… cosmetic effects until I'd already left Konoha, too late to prevent them, and as you can see I know a little something about going through life with a unique appearance. So, I really am sorry."

"Yeah, still not gonna join you," Sakura retorted, "This is absurd."

"I- There's no way I'll join you dattebayo!" Naruto denied, far less sure of himself than usual, "I don't believe anything you said! You're a criminal, and a liar, and, and so there!" Sasuke chose to remain silent, his mind churning over Orochimaru's offer. The snake sannin was unquestionably powerful, and it was entirely possible he could make Sasuke strong enough to challenge Itachi. However, Sasuke wasn't sure if the treacherous sannin had an ulterior motive, and even if he didn't there was no way he could possibly trust Orochimaru's word. But, if there was a chance to become that strong…

Sasuke was under no illusions about the gap between himself and Uchiha Itachi. Itachi had been a prodigy, hailed as the greatest ninja the clan had produced in recorded history. Itachi had awakened his sharingan at the age of four, graduated top student from the academy at seven, was promoted to chunin at 10, was an ANBU captain at thirteen and by fourteen was powerful enough to slay almost every single other Uchiha, over two hundred elite ninja and countless civilians, with the other ANBU only noticing when he was almost done. Currently, the Hokage didn't even bother sending hunter-ninja after Itachi; there was no point in wasting lives. Even Orochimaru still had to deal with assassins.

Sasuke had also graduated at the top of his class, with the sharingan active, but his eyes had awakened the night of the massacre, at the age of seven, and he'd graduated at the usual age of eleven. Itachi was a genius, a prodigy, and occaisionally, in his darkest moments, Sasuke was forced to admit that while he was very good for a normal ninja his age, for an Uchiha he was distinctly average. At his current rate of growth, Sasuke would only surpass his brother when Itachi was made decrepit with age, if even then. Sasuke needed an S-rank teacher, and the snake sannin definitely qualified. The question was if Sasuke would survive the experience. However, before Sasuke could make a decision one way or the other, he was pulled out of his thoughts by a loud buzzing noise that came rapidly closer to the four ninja, its source stopping to hover in the air next to the sannin.

The noise came from a well-tanned girl, probably in her early twenties, who hovered in the air on a pair of human-scale, iridescent, rapidly beating dragonfly wings. She wore a simple grey skirt and a similarly-styled belly shirt, drawing attention to her distinctive eyes and hair. The former were a dull orange, and the latter a bright teal, held out of her face and the wind from her wings by a black bandanna with the same pattern as Orochimaru's lab coat.

"Hey, snakey!" she irreverently addressed the sannin, "We gotta scram."

"Didn't I tell you I wanted to do this alone?" snapped Orochimaru, "And please don't call me that in public. Please?"

"No time for that," she whined, "We gotta leave, now. An army of masked voyeurs is closing in on our position!" For once, Orochimaru seemed lost for words.

"Do I even want to know?" he finally asked, after a long pause.

"They're all dressed in black tights and blank, porcelain masks. They go all over the village and watch everybody, like, twenty four-seven" she explained, "This place is really messed up, if they're letting perverts run around the roofs like that! Shouldn't the police be doing something about it? Jiraiya can't possibly have that much influence."

"Fu, those aren't voyeurs," Orochimaru mumbled from around his hand, which had met with his face at some point during Fu's description. "Those are the ANBU, the elite black-ops ninja of Konoha. It's their job to do that stuff."

"Well, none of the other villages have their ANBU doin' internal surveillance like this," Fu pouted, "Hey, maybe old one-eye's hiding something. Oooh, I bet he's making a secret army! To take over the world! In the name of leaf village and grumpy old people! I betcha five hundred ryo that's totally his plan."

"You know, sometimes I wonder which of us is really the smart one here," the sannin heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Because when you say things like that, it makes me wonder."

"Don't be silly, snakey," Fu scolded lightly, "We both already know Chomei is the smart one on this team. But she says to pile on the compliments anyway."

Orochimaru worked his mouth open and closed several times before finally finding his voice again, "Remind me why I'm working with you again?"

"Don'tcha remember?" Fu reminded, "Fearless leader says you need to lighten up, and I can only go outside around responsible people. I guess he thinks you're responsible, and Chomei isn't, for some reason."

"How could I have possibly forgotten," the sannin muttered "Let's continue this conversation another time, when we're not being hunted by Danzo's finest. Sasuke, Naruto, Sakura, I hope to see you again, under friendlier circumstances. And what did I say about calling me that in public?!" Still muttering in discontent, Orochimaru sunk into the ground with a signless earth style jutsu, while Fu ascended until she was just a dot in the sky, heading away from Konoha. The genin, when the ANBU agents found them, were seated in a row, backs to the partially destroyed ramen counter, huddled together for comfort. When the S-ranked missing-nin had retreated, he'd taken their respective adrenaline rushes with him, and the trio had crashed, hard, their fear and injuries catching up with them all at once. After all, they'd just had a very trying few minutes, and it wasn't even past breakfast time yet!


	6. To be or not to be Chunin!

Surprisingly, team seven was allowed to continue in the chunin exams after their encounter with Orochimaru. While the genin's superiors went over the area and the preteens' recounting of the battle with a fine-toothed comb, the three genin hadn't actually done anything wrong, and they had all refused the traitor's offer (or at least not actively accepted it). If nothing else, arresting people for being in contact with a Konoha missing-nin would require the military police to detain a fair portion of the village's elite ninja. Furthermore, the three had acquired valuable information on Orochimaru, who had done his best to drop off the face of the earth for the past few months. Konoha now knew that he had a partner, an exceptionally dangerous kunoichi identified tentatively as Fu, a defector from the minor village Takigakure, the village hidden by a waterfall. Fu is the jinchuriki of the seven-tailed dragonfly demon, who fled her home for unknown reasons three years previously. Taki and several major villages had attempted to recapture her for the demon, all unsuccessfully. Her partnership with Orochimaru went a long way toward explaining why she was so difficult to capture. A lone missing-nin, no matter how powerful, isn't an unbeatable threat, Uchiha Itachi aside. A single person is limited by their physical body, chakra reserves, and human senses. However, with a partner, Orochimaru's vast resources, and the tailed beast that called itself 'Lucky Sevens Chomei' on her side, Fu had everything she needed to fend off as many hunters as were sent.

Of equal interest were the matching coat and bandana the pair had worn. The same pattern was familiar to the Hokage and his command staff, having been used as the uniform of a ninja organization called Akatsuki, or the Red Dawn. Akatsuki were a rebel faction opposed to the leader of Hidden Rain, Hanzo of the Salamander, emerging about six years ago, but were thought to have been destroyed by Hanzo at around the time of the Uchiha massacre in an unrelated event. Whether Akatsuki were still active, with Orochimaru and Fu as members, someone was using the name of Akatsuki for their own ends, or Orochimaru and Fu had allied with a former member of Akatsuki, this single tidbit of information threw Konoha's entire intelligence division into a panic. In the scramble in search of how Konoha had missed such powerful ninja joining an organization together, Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke were asked to repeat everything they'd seen and heard ad nauseum. By the time they were finally debriefed to satisfaction and allowed to return to the test, all hope for advancing to the third test seemed lost.

However, salvation came once more in the form of Yakushi Kabuto, who had noticed something very interesting about the rules of the test. Genma had said that each team needed to deliver a heaven and an earth scroll to Hokage Tower. He had not said that each team needed its own set of scrolls. Thus, toward dusk on the fifth day, team seven, team ten, and Kabuto, who had been separated from his team by a vicious attack from a Kumo team, turned in their scrolls to an impressed Genma, who hadn't expected anyone to catch his hint.

In the end, six teams passed. Four of them were from Konoha. Team seven and team ten passed, as did Kabuto's team, which included two older genin named Akado Yoroi and Tsurugi Misumi. The fourth Konoha team was headed by Might Gai, the same jonin who'd helped in the first task. It contained Rock Lee, the only person who'd cheered for Gai, Hinata's cousin Hyuga Neji, and a kunoichi named Tenten. Prehaps inevitably, Gaara's team from Suna had passed. The final team was the team from Ame Kabuto had joked about, consisting of three clanless shinobi named Shigure (the scarred one), Karin (the redhead with the glasses), and Fugaku (who happened to have the same name as Sasuke's father). However, this was more people than had been expected to pass with light enough injuries to continue, so a set of preliminary bouts would be held to pare down the genin, much to everyone but the bloodthirsty Gaara's dismay. The genin would be paired off, and only the winners would be allowed to continue toward promotion. So it was no surprise that every eye in the arena, a large stadium where Konoha had held their chunin exam tournaments for over a century, was glued to the electronic scoreboard, where the matches would be announced. Soon enough, the first match was posted: Uzumaki Naruto vs. Shigure of Ame. Naruto was slightly disappointed to be going first, but he had to admit it was a relief to get it over with quickly.

"Hey, kid, you might wanna give up now," Shigure offered Naruto as they stood face to face in the center of the arena. He drew a wooden umbrella from a holster on his back and expanded it casually, "These things don't exactly have a capture setting. Unless you think you can take a hundred chakra-accelerated senbon, you're gonna be a porcupine."

"Heh, that's all?" Naruto affected boredom, "Only a hundred senbon? Won't even slow an awesome guy like me down at all dattebayo. You need a bigger stick to be threatenin' someone like me, ya know."

"We'll see about that!" The minute Genma stepped out of the line of fire, Shigure threw his umbrella into the sky and made a single hand sign, "Take this! Rain of death!" The umbrella ejected countless senbon from its wooden slats, which homed in on Naruto like heat-seeking missiles, until the Konoha genin blew away the projectiles and their launcher with a single wind jutsu. Shigure gaped at him in shock for a few, precious seconds, "So that's why you were so confident… Oh, crap."

One painful beating later, and Naruto was guaranteed a chance to become chunin. Eagerly watching the next match, the jinchuriki was treated to an equally one-sided battle between Temari and Shino from team ten. Shino had a technique that allowed him to control chakra-eating beetles, and against almost any other foe his creepy abilities would have given him an easy victory. However, the tiny, light insects couldn't get through Temari's powerful wind jutsu, enhanced and focused by her enormous fan, and he was forced to surrender.

The third match was between Fugaku of Ame and Tenten, both of whom turned out to be specialists in projectile weapons and explosives. Tenten was more skilled, but Fugaku also knew a few fire jutsu, which evened the field. In the end, the result was a double knockout from simultaneous explosives use.

The fourth match, though, instantly had Naruto's full attention: Hyuga Hinata vs. Hyuga Neji. While Naruto supposed it made sense that the Hokage only wanted one Hyuga in the final tournament, which was a pretty big spectator event, the demon vessel also knew from his long friendship with Hinata that for some reason Neji loathed his cousin with all his heart. Furthermore, this match could be a long one. Hinata and Neji belong to the same family. They have the same Kekkei Genkai, the same Gentle Fist fighting style, the same teachers, the same family looks. They even assumed the same guard position when Genma told them to get ready to fight!

The first clash was inconclusive, with neither fighter landing a decisive blow. But, that didn't mean as much as it usually did. The Hyuga's Gentle Fist fighting style uses the Byakugan kekkei genkai to pinpoint weak spots in the opponent's body, and then attack them with nothing more than chakra and a single touch. One scratch in the wrong place can defeat even the strongest ninja, and when the two Hyuga came apart, both had taken many, many scratches. But, Hinata was breathing heavily, and Neji wasn't even sweating.

"Give up, cousin," he ordered her imperiously, "You won't win."

"N-no," Hinata's tone was resigned, but she denied the order anyway, "I- I didn't come h-here to lose today. E-even to you. I w-won't lose."

"What sort of ninja s-s-sutters?" the older Hyuga mocked, "You may be able to fool yourself, but you can't fool my eyes. Your posture, huddled in on yourself in a vain attempt to find comfort. Your eyes, which never directly face mine. I suppose it doesn't really matter; the byakugan cares not for the direction of your face, but you could at least look your opponent in the eyes! Your voice, which breaks even as you speak your defiance. You say nothing but fear and inadequacy. You are weak. I am strong. I am fated to win today. You will lose. Give up now, or we shall see if you are fated to die as well. If you do not believe me, then look under your sleeves with those eyes of yours. See your destiny." Hinata flinched at something she saw with her matter-defying eyes, and with shaking fingers lifted a sleeve of her jacket to reveal fingertip-shaped burn marks tracing up her arm.

"Well," Kakashi, who had joined the small audience to support his students, was almost impressed, "He's targeting the tenketsu. You don't see many Hyuga who can do that."

"Sensei, what's a tenketsu?" Naruto worried, "It's bad for Hinata, isn't it."

"Yeah," the jonin confirmed Naruto's fears, "You know how chakra is carried around the body in a sort of second circulatory system when you use it, or at least, Iruka taught you this in school. The normal gentle fist targets this system with its attacks. However, there are a bunch of points called tenketsu on this system, no larger than the point of a pin. If you can hit them accurately, you could, in theory, control or block the flow of an opponent's chakra. They're the same points used in acupuncture. The thing is, the sharingan can see the circulatory systems, although not well enough for gentle fist, but it can't even detect the general area where a tenketsu is located. Most byakugan are not able to see them either. This Neji kid, he's really a genius, to not only see them but target them in a fight. With the tenketsu in her arms blocked, Hinata won't be able to use Gentle Fist anymore. Even if she fights on, it's already over. She's lost. It isn't like the Hyuga will have bothered to teach her a chakra-less fighting style; the entire clan is married to their archaic traditions and sense of superiority."

"Screw that, dattebayo!" Naruto wasn't buying it, "Hinata!" he cheered, "Don't you dare lose to a guy like that! And I thought Sasuke was a jerk! Kick his ass! I know you can do it!" Sasuke and Sakura promptly pinned their teammate under a bench for his insults, before replacing him in cheering for their battered friend.

But what could she do? Hinata was out of options. She desperately turned the problem over in her head, mostly ignoring Neji's abusive monologue about inevitability of her defeat. How could she fight without her arms? Sure, she could still move them, but her chakra would not flow through the blocked paths within. Then, she remembered a lesson in the academy, long ago, on the basic mechanics of ninjutsu. Hand signs, Iruka had taught, are more a memory aid than anything else for an experienced ninja, who doesn't need to use them for a well-practiced technique. Hinata had no jutsu that were so familiar, but it was said that necessity is the mother of invention. She could use the meaningless signs to help remember how it felt when they worked correctly, and use the Gentle Fist to guide her chakra in the same pattern inside her mouth. Neji hadn't hit her face once. Too bad for him.

"Sorry, cousin, but I don't believe in that predestination nonsense," Hinata cut through Neji's yammering, hands flashing through a long chain of signs, all her remaining reserves gathering inside her mouth, "My fate is my own to shape, and no one else's!"

Neji's eyes widened, as his enhanced vision told him exactly what Hinata was doing, and informed him with cold certainty that there was no way he could reach Hinata with the Gentle Fist attack that would render her helpless before she could perform her ninjutsu. He had just enough time to wish that he had spent a bit less effort perfecting his hand-to-hand skills, and a bit more on his elemental jutsu training, because an earth technique would be so very useful right now, before a huge, liquid shark introduced his head to the arena wall, sending the older Hyuga spiraling down into welcome, headache and humiliation-relieving unconsciousness.

On the other side of the arena, panting on her knees and utterly spent but still aware, Hinata was too tired to even react to a shocked Genma announcing her victory and the sweet, sweet sound of Naruto screaming her name above the clamor of the crowd, before she allowed herself to slip into the sleep of the righteously vindicated. She'd showed all her stuffy relatives, who tried to keep her from hanging out with a 'lowly peasant' like Uzumaki Naruto. If she hadn't been friends with Naruto, how would she have been able to learn a powerful water jutsu from his sensei, the great ninjutsu master Kakashi? Without that jutsu, how could she have beaten the most traditionally talented Hyuga to be born in Konoha, with a single blow no less? Sure, she might have given herself chakra exhaustion and blown out several of her own tenketsu to do it, but despite her wounds Hinata fainted a very happy girl. Being right when her entire clan was wrong was such a delicious feeling. She only wished she'd stayed awake long enough to see the look on her father's face.

Up in the stands, Kurenai, Hinata's sensei, was giving a suspicious look to a distinctly smug-looking Kakashi. "And I suppose you know nothing about this?"

"Well, remember that week you were out on sick leave with the flu, when you asked me to watch your team?" Kakashi explained, "Well, they may have asked Naruto about the mission in Wave, and gotten the highly embellished version, complete with sound effects. Of course, when they heard about how my cute little genin learned to 'shoot awesome lightning bolts and throw S-ranked missing-nin off bridges', Naruto's words, not mine, they begged me to teach them how to do that too. I tested their affinities, told them to talk to you once they cleared the first stage of elemental jutsu training, and gave each of them a scroll for a B-ranked jutsu to learn once they were ready for it. I guess Hinata decided she was. But still, she basically did that jutsu signless. I'd say your girl is more of a genius than her lauded cousin."

While Naruto fussed over Hinata, mostly just getting in the doctors' way, the exams continued to match five. Kabuto's teammate Yoroi faced off against the girl from Hidden Rain, Karin. Yoroi had a jutsu that let him drain chakra with physical contact alone, but once he bragged about it, Karin just stood still and let him use it. After ten minutes of draining, Karin was barely winded and Yoroi had overloaded his body with excess energy, giving her an easy win. Suddenly, the contestants were forced to revise their opinion of the unassuming girl. If Yoroi's boasts had been accurate, he could drain a jonin in thirty seconds. This meant that Karin had significantly more than twenty times the reserves of the average jonin, jinchuriki-level chakra levels, even if she wasn't a jinchuriki herself. If nothing else, Karin could throw around high level ninjutsu with ease, and she hadn't revealed any of her tactics in the match.

The sixth match also included one of Kabuto's teammates, Misumi, against Kankuro, the armored puppetmaster from Suna. The match was equally one-sided. Misumi was utterly incapable of penetrating Kankuro's armor, and the Konoha ninja was forced to surrender.

The seventh match, though, had Naruto interested again: Uchiha Sasuke vs. Rock Lee. Sasuke entered the match certain of an easy victory, only to quickly realize that he was outmatched, because Lee was fast. The closest comparison Sasuke could draw was to when he'd faced Zabuza's doppelganger, because as swift as Lee could move, he was not on Orochimaru's level. But, the spandex-clad genin was faster, stronger, and tougher than his opponent, and he moved with the skill of countless hours of drill. Even with the sharingan active, and using his sword for extra reach, Sasuke could barely keep up. He didn't have the time to use any ninjutsu, and without that he knew he was fighting a losing battle. The Uchiha had just resigned himself to defeat, when Lee backed off, using his superior speed to gain distance rapidly.

"You are quite good," Lee acknowledged his foe's skill, "The flames of your youth burn brightly. But you, who is known as a genius, will be defeated by me, who graduated with lower grades than Naruto. Do you know why this will be?" Sasuke saved his breath, not bothering to question his good fortune, as he activated his lightning jutsu behind his back and prepared as much of a fireball as he could without being obvious about it. "As a natural genius, your skills are a complete mismatch for mine." While he was speaking, Lee removed a set of weights from his ankles with a slow, dramatic flourish. "With the speed and strength I have gained from endless, youthful dedication, I will show you what true genius really is! Even though I cannot use ninjutsu or genjutsu, I still am stronger than you. I am a genius of hard work!" Meanwhile, Sasuke met Lee's eyes with his sharingan, genjutsu at the ready. Lee hadn't, and according to his own words, couldn't use ninjutsu or genjutsu. Maybe he hadn't done much work on countering them either. It was worth a shot, at least. "Now get ready! My next move will surpass your so-called genius enti-" In the middle of his sentence, Lee abruptly collapsed in a boneless heap, snoring gently. Sasuke shook his head in disappointment.

"Didn't you learn anything from your teammate's match? You talk too much. Win first, then give a lecture," Sasuke closed his eyes, turned around, and started walking away. "Genius of hard work? Hmph. Who here hasn't worked hard to gain their skills? Doing the same thing everyone else did to get stronger does not give you an extra advantage. What a fool."

"You know, Gai, my student might be rude, but he does have a point," Kakashi addressed his fellow jonin, "Your students both had the advantage in their fights, until they gave their opponents an opening and got blindsided. Maybe you should be focusing less on physical training and more on tactics. Maybe some ninjutsu."

"I will encourage Neji down this path immediately," vowed Gai, "But my youthful Lee… He cannot follow. Ninjutsu is not within his abilities."

"Wait, he was serious?" Kakashi was stunned, "He actually can't use ninjutsu or genjutsu, and he's that good already? Unless… All his chakra is going toward physical enhancement, and if he's training constantly, which knowing you he is… huh. He still needs to work on fighting smarter, though. I could run him though some ANBU tactics courses, give him some genjutsu resistance training, if you help bring Naruto's taijutsu up to academy standards. The kid's close combat strategy seems to be to swarm the other guy with doppelgangers, and that's not going to work against a strong opponent. Lee would have wiped the floor with Naruto."

Gai pretended to think about this for a second, but there was really only one answer he could give. "When do we start?"

The eighth match pitted Kiba against Kabuto, and the outcome was never really in doubt. Kiba had a special clan technique that let him share his abilities with Akamaru. The dog got human size and shape, tactics, and equipment, while Kiba picked up enhanced senses, speed and strength. Kabuto had six years of experience to Kiba's three months, and an intimate familiarity with the human body from his studies at the hospital. The medic was able to tell Kiba from the shapeshifted Akamaru with ease, and disable his foe with a textbook-perfect sleeper hold. Without Kiba, Akamaru couldn't maintain his transformation, and the pair was forced to surrender. This meant that the final match pitted Haruno Sakura against Gaara of the desert.

Sakura almost gave up right then. Gaara was extremely intimidating, and Kabuto's assessment of his skills didn't exactly give her hope. That said, Sakura hadn't actually seen Gaara in action. For all she knew, he couldn't actually back up his reputation. She didn't expect this to be the case, but nonetheless resolved to at least see what he could do before fleeing danger like she might have liked to.

Soon, the two genin found themselves facing off, Sakura nervously staring into Gaara's expressionless face. When Genma gave the signal, the kunoichi slid into a guard stance, while Gaara stared at her, motionless. They held this position for endless seconds, stretching off into infinity, before Gaara simply walked away, with a quiet "I surrender. She wins." Sakura had not been expecting that!

Gaara's sensei Baki, Temari, and Kankuro met their teammate on the stairs up from the arena floor, shocked questions on their lips. "I-is that Sakura chick really that strong?" Kankuro asked nervously, "Because if you can't beat her, what chance do we have? She must be a monster!"

"No," Gaara denied, "That's not it."

"Then why?" Baki demanded, "You know how important it is that you be present for the final matches! The Kazekage will be furious!"

"It will not be a problem," Gaara promised, "I will attend to witness the matches of my brother and sister. Konoha values family. They will believe me when I say I am interested, and allow me to attend." The genin's expression became faintly puzzled. "I surrendered because I do not want to kill her. If we fought, she would die. Everyone who fights me dies. I want her to be… safe. When she is near, mother speaks of things that are not blood. I do not think I have ever felt this way before. Is this what love feels like?" Gaara's teammates found themselves lost for words. Gaara, in love? It sounded impossible, but the evidence was oddly compelling…

"Well, love is complicated. It feels different to everyone," Temari qualified, "But for you, probably, yeah. Sounds like love to me."

Gaara gave his siblings an utterly lost, plaintive look. "Then, what should I do?" Temari looked to her other brother and her sensei for support, but their expressions clearly said that they were not going to get involved. Not with this. No way in hell. Temari had drawn attention to herself first, and for this Kankuro and Baki were indescribably grateful, as they could make their escape from the awkward conversation that was sure to follow.

While Temari reluctantly helped her homicidal brother explore his long-repressed feelings, Kakashi took his students out to a nice restaurant to celebrate all three of them making it to the final round of the chunin exams. The jonin had not expected his students to do so well, but he was no less proud of them for it. The pairings for the final tournament had been announced: Naruto vs. Kankuro, Sasuke vs. Hinata, Temari vs. Kabuto, and Karin vs. Sakura. Soon, the genin of team seven would begin intensive training to compete with their, for the most part, far more experienced foes. Kakashi let slip that he had lined up skilled supplemental teachers for all three of them, to hone skills that he could not, but the jonin was tight-lipped about who he had contacted. However, he did stress that while each teacher was most interested in a different member of team seven, Kakashi had forced them to agree to teach any of the genin who asked. You never leave a teammate behind.


	7. The Sensei and the Paperwork Ninja

Not one to waste valuable training time (all other time was, of course, fair game), Kakashi met with his genin bright and early the following day to introduce them to their potential new teachers for the next month, and possibly beyond. None of the genin had an easy match-up. Naruto currently lacked anything that could effectively penetrate Kankuro's armor. Sasuke was no match for Hinata's gentle fist at close range, and at longer ranges her water-style jutsu trumped his fire techniques. Sakura didn't know what Karin's skills were, but the rain ninja had shown the potential to use A-ranked or even S-ranked ninjutsu, so Sakura wasn't going to take any chances. All three knew they needed to produce drastic improvement just to give their opponents a good fight, let alone win.

Thus, it was with excitement that the three genin met Kakashi at the usual training ground seven to meet their new sensei. Kakashi lazily greeted the first to arrive, a nondescript face that the genin were quite familiar with. "I know you all know him, but he's pretty important, so I'll give him the grand introduction anyway," Kakashi drawled, "This is Tenzo, wood-style master. He signed up primarily to work with Sakura, but he's willing to help you boys with water and earth style if you want. Tenzo's as good at water jutsu as I am, and almost as good at earth, so you're in good hands with him." The next arrival was the same spandex-clad, bowl-cut jonin from before, Might Gai in all his glory, complete with mini-me Rock Lee. "You've already met Gai. He might look and dress a little dubious. Ok, a lot dubious. But, he's also the best Taijutsu instructor in the village. Possibly alive. He and his apprentice have agreed to help with physical skills, since none of his genin made it into the finals."

"I look forward to stoking your flames of YOUTH to volcanic levels!" yelled Gai at his only volume setting, "And my YOUTHFUL battle garb allows complete freedom of movement in a breathable yet weatherproof package. You cannot mock it until you have tried it, for you will never go back! This I swear! In fact, if you try it for a week and do not find it the best combat clothing ever, I will scale the Hokage tower with only my teeth and my left big toe!" The jonin's radioactive smile beamed over the assembled ninja.

"Yosh! And I will join him in this youthful challenge!" Lee was not to be outdone.

"Oh, Lee!" Gai embraced his ward in a tearful hug.

"Gai-sensei!" Lee's eyes were no drier.

"Lee!" Gai's already booming voice got even louder. Kakashi shielded his eyes with a _Make-out Paradise_ book, and Tenzo took cover behind a tree, but the genin stared at the display in horrified fascination.

"Gai-sensei!" An all-encompassing genjutsu of a golden, setting sun over a cliff besieged by crashing waves covered the environment, providing a backdrop to Lee and Gai's emotional display. Team seven found, to their horror, that they could not look away. The illusion would not dispel, and using the Sharingan to try to make it vanish proved a terrible mistake, as the kekkei genkai could not see through the illusion. Even worse, anything seen with the sharingan remains fresh in the viewer's mind as the day it was seen for all time. Sasuke frantically shut the experience in the same repress-and-deny cubby inside his battered psyche as the Uchiha massacre, Itachi, and Orochimaru's killing intent. When the illusion shattered, Sakura staggered to a nearby bush to throw up, but Gai and his apprentice did not notice.

"He really is quite good," Kakashi muttered apologetically, while Naruto swore dreadful prank vengeance upon the silver-haired jonin for subjecting his students to Gai's display.

The next teacher to arrive introduced himself as "Gekko Hayate, special jonin. Pleased to me-" He then broke off into a wet, hacking, coughing fit. The older ninja was pale, with dark bags under his eyes, which contrasted with his dark hair and uniform to make him seem even sicker than he obviously was. A long katana hung at his waist. "I'm the village's current swordmaster, but as you can see, I'm slightly concerned about making certain my techniques aren't lost to the next generation. I heard there were talented genin in this group interested in kenjutsu, and I didn't want to pass up the opportunity. And don't worry, I'm not contagious. Anymore." The genin, who had been slowly edging away from the ill jonin, halted their movements with a collective sigh of relief, only to jump back in alarm as a massive cloud of smoke and dust accompanied the thump of something massive hitting the ground between the younger ninja and their teachers.

With a dull report of displaced air, the obscuring smoke parted, revealing the most… colorful person any of the genin had ever seen. He had white hair, gathered in a spiky ponytail that nearly reached his knees, and wore garish red and green clothes with a set of red platform sandals, although even without them he would have been the tallest person in the clearing by half a foot. Twin red lines stretched from his bottom eyelids to bracket his very square chin. He wore a headband in an archaic style, complete with decorative miniature horns, with the kanji for oil etched in the center. To complete the image, the odd man was dancing on the back of a brilliant blue toad as tall as he was. "You can believe your eyes, gentlemen and ladies, the great sage of Mount Myoboku, has arrived!" He finished his dance by clicking his heels together and striking a dramatic Kabuki pose, only for the toad to shift its balance and unceremoniously dump him face-first into the dirt. The amphibian gave its former rider a vaguely disapproving look before disappearing in another puff of smoke. "Never fear, ladies and fans, for nothing can discourage the greatest of men!"

"Then you ought to be easy to get rid of," Sakura cut in, "Kakashi-sensei, why the hell is this idiot here? This is the same guy that got caught peeping on the public baths a few days ago. Kurenai-sensei and a couple of her friends beat him into a pulp without really trying. And now we get to add animal abuse to his criminal record, with whatever he was doing to that poor toad."

"You want this guy to teach us?" Naruto agreed with his teammate, "This guy acts like me dattebayo! Except, yanno, not as good at it. I thought I was supposed to be getting better at stuff?"

"You don't recognize him?" Sasuke certainly did, "That's Jiraiya, of the sannin. It's said that the only reason he isn't Hokage right now is that he declined the job. How could you not want to learn from him? It's the opportunity of a lifetime!"

"Must be an imposter," Sakura observed clinically, "Not buying it. I'm gonna work with the competent people."

"Emo-boy's right!" Jiraiya made a grab for his rapidly evaporating credibility, "The Toad Sage is just an alias, and I'm through with aliases! The Gallant Jiraiya! That is my true identity!"

"You're an S-ranked ninja. Konoha's strongest fighter, and a sage of the ancient secrets of ninjutsu." Naruto tilted his head to one side, "Naw, I just can't see it."

"Then I'll prove it to you!" Jiraiya seized on the opportunity, "Have you ever felt, say, a different kind of chakra inside you, Naruto? I'll teach you how to use it!"

"Uh, no? I haven't?" Naruto was clueless, "You suck, dude." While Jiraiya gaped like a landed fish, Naruto turned to the other sensei. "Even spandex guy looks more trustworthy. But I wanna work with Hayate! Sasuke always kicks my ass when we spar, but if I learn from the best sword fighter in the village, it'll be different the next time! And then I'll be one step closer to Hokage dattebayo!"

Hayate had heard that Sasuke was a budding kenjutsu prodigy, and had been hoping to take the Uchiha on as a personal apprentice. However, an enthusiastic, trustworthy, and dedicated student was a rare gift for a ninja looking to teach, and Hayate wasn't about pass up the opportunity. "I would be happy to teach you, Naruto. We (cough) can get started now, if you'd like." The special jonin was practically dragged away by a chattering Naruto while Jiraiya was still recovering from his off-hand dismissal.

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with Naruto on this one. Incredible, I know," Sakura turned to Tenzo, "I assume you have something useful to teach me?" With that last dig at Jiraiya's competence, Sakura strode from the clearing, an apologetic Tenzo close behind. Jiraiya and Gai were left behind, the latter enjoying the show and the former feeling rather disappointed. Jiraiya had intended to pass on to Naruto the secrets of sealing, as well as how to better control the power of the nine-tailed fox. He had never dreamed that Naruto would not have accessed the demon's power yet, with the stressful situations he had been subjected to!

Then, and it was a testament to Jiraiya's shock that it took the master ninja as long as it did, he remembered that Kakashi had three students. Where was the third one? After scanning the surroundings, the toad sage looked down to find Uchiha Sasuke, the very definition of prideful, bowing his forehead into the dirt at Jiraiya's feet.

"Please teach me, sensei," Sasuke pleaded, unable to keep the tone of desperation out of his voice, "I am willing to do whatever is required of me."

Over the next few days, while Naruto endured seemingly endless footwork drills and Sakura explored the limits of what could be constructed with wood, Jiraiya found that Sasuke was indeed willing to do absolutely anything for instruction. Including sacrifice his reputation, ego, dignity, self-esteem, and physical well-being. The sannin had expected Sasuke to bow out after a few days of pointless tasks so Jiraiya would be free to work with Naruto. But when the genin returned from his latest mission with perfectly accurate nude drawings of women the sannin, assuming Sasuke would refuse to do it, had sent the genin to spy on, the toad sage realized that his student, of sorts, was not going to quit. Jiraiya decided it was time to talk to Kakashi; Sasuke's actions seemed totally out of character for him.

However, Kakashi was just as surprised as the sannin. Sasuke hadn't been willing to ask Kakashi for anything, even after the jonin had demonstrated his skills. He suggested that Jiraiya ask Sakura, who had been convinced of the sage's credentials, although she still avoided him as much as possible on general principle. Of everyone in Konoha, Sakura probably knew Sasuke best, if only because she had practically stalked him for two years while they were in the academy together.

"Well, you heard about Orochimaru attacking us during the second test?" Sakura shared, when asked by the perplexed sannin, "He offered to train Sasuke to Itachi's level. Orochimaru also offered to use a forbidden jutsu to let Naruto meet his mother." Sakura missed it, but Jiraiya flinched slightly at the thought. "Then, he offered them both jobs. Neither of them have talked about it, but I know they had to have both been really tempted. Naruto doesn't like to share about himself; he usually tries to change the subject whenever he gets asked a personal question. But when he actually opens up a little, it's pretty obvious he'd do almost anything for his friends. Even better, from Orochimaru's perspective, Naruto doesn't have a lot of experience in being a friend, Hinata and Kiba exempted. It takes a lot less for Naruto to consider someone a close friend than anyone I've ever met, and when I said he'd do anything for them, I meant anything. How much further would he go for family, who, in theory at least, would love him unconditionally? I- I mean, that's what family is supposed to do, and it's obvious he isn't really used to people who care about him, more than what you'd expect from basic human decency. I- Well, once I started noticing… I've been trying to be nicer to him, but no matter what I do it'll always be a raindrop in the ocean. I'm still not gonna go out on a date with him, though." Jiraiya appeared caught between dismay and abject guilt, but Sakura was on a roll now, and didn't pick up on his changing expression.

"That said, Naruto may be improving rapidly, he'd probably be the most driven person I know if I didn't know Sasuke, but Naruto's still an idiot. He has a short attention span, and is probably better at compartmentalizing things than is healthy, so he's not going to worry about it until the exams are over. Sasuke, though, he constantly broods about this sort of thing. I don't think he's done a single thing that hasn't been directly related to hunting down and killing his brother since his parents' funerals. I didn't stop asking him out because I lost interest, you know. I just don't think there's any way he'll respond until he gets some closure. It… I'm kind of worried about him, actually, more so now that I know him a little better. Obsessing like that for four years straight can't be healthy. Sasuke has to be worried about what Orochimaru wants to do to him, but he might not think he has another choice if he wants to become Itachi's equal. Then, you come along, just as strong as Orochimaru, and offer to teach Sasuke, without the risk of you stealing his eyes or something. As far as he's concerned, you're his only hope for avenging his family without betraying his friends or the village." Even if he wanted to save his best, personal techniques for Naruto, Jiraiya resolved to take Sasuke's instruction seriously from now on. The last thing he wanted was to turn a promising young genin over to Orochimaru.

Thus, as two weeks passed by, Sasuke actually learned quite a bit from Jiraiya, especially in honing the genin's fire jutsu with exercises in the manipulation of pure fire-style chakra. After some consideration, the sage also started teaching his personal taijutsu style to Sasuke, passed down by the toad summons (The source of Jiraiya's toad, summoning is a type of ninjutsu that allows a ninja to make a mutual aid contract with a type of ninja animal and teleport them to his or her side in times of need. The power and number of the summoned being[s] is directly proportional to the amount of chakra used to summon them) to their representative. Additionally, Sasuke did some bladework drills with Hayate and on Kakashi's insistence, began learning the special lightning technique, invented in Kumogakure, that can be used to exponentially enhance one's speed and durability. All-in-all, the Uchiha felt like he was improving rapidly, although he was still unsure how he would defeat Hinata. A ranged lightning jutsu would be perfect, but Kumogakure guarded such techniques jealously and successfully, and Sasuke didn't like his chances of inventing an entire new jutsu in one month.

Naruto spent extensive time with Hayate, improving his sword skills by leaps and bounds. He also talked Asuma into sharing the jonin's special blade enhancement technique, which runs wind chakra through a weapon to increase its cutting power. An enhanced blade can slice through a boulder like butter. Naruto was sure Kankuro's armor would fare no better. The technique was not a closely guarded secret, and if he had wanted to, Naruto could have learned it from a scroll in the military library. However, the demon vessel had no patience for book work, sealing aside. Naruto also spent some time learning about the sealing arts from Jiraiya, but the jinchuriki never gained much respect for the sannin, continuing to insist he was a fraud. And a pervert (which was true, to be fair). However, once Jiraiya proved his sealing skills by removing the Five Elements seal Orochimaru had placed on the jinchuriki, Naruto had to admit that the toad sage knew his seals. Naruto even studied under Gai, gaining some of the physical skills the demon vessel had missed at the academy.

Sakura focused on her ninjutsu with Tenzo, gaining a better understanding of how to shape the wood she produced. She was still hindered by her relatively low chakra reserves and lack of conditioning, as she had only recently started putting effort into the physical side of her chosen profession. Sakura had the average amount of power for a girl her age, which was utterly insufficient for high-level ninjutsu, so she went on a special training regimen constructed by Gai and Jiraiya to improve her physical skills and available chakra, which did work, even if she felt like kneaded dough after every session.

At about halfway through the training month, as he did every day, Naruto visited Ichiraku Ramen for a late lunch. Usually, the stand emptied at that time, as other prospective customers knew that the shop's stocks would be cleared out by the hungry genin until the reserve ingredients were brought out for dinner. So, Naruto was surprised to see another customer at the counter. She was a youngish woman, wearing simple clothes, a hidden rain headband to hold her deep blue hair in place, and a paper flower tucked behind one ear. She was currently busy sealing a tall stack of full ramen bowls into storage seals. Naruto reacted as anyone who knew him would have predicted.

"Stop stealing my ramen dattebayo!" He yelled, striking a dramatic, and although he never would have admitted it, Jiraiya-like pose, accusing finger outstretched at the kunoichi. She ignored him with quiet dignity. "That's my lunch! Hands off!"

"Your lunch?" Her soft voice was full of humor, "I ordered it. I paid for it. I think that makes it my lunch, Uzumaki Naruto." Naruto, although he was never the best at the mental side of being a ninja, was put immediately on guard. How did a foreign ninja know his name?

"Who are you? How do you know me?" Subtle, Naruto was not, "Answer me dattebayo!"

"How could I not know you?" She smiled slightly, "After all, most of Mr. Ichiraku's most amusing stories seem to have you in the starring role. Uzumaki Naruto, his most valuable customer. However, just to keep things fair, my name is Konan. I'm the jonin-sensei for the team from Ame that made it into the finals."

"That still doesn't tell me what you're doing with all that ramen! Are you really going to eat it all?" Naruto seemed close to tears at the thought.

"What? No! It is not for me. Well, maybe one bowl." Konan explained, "It's for a… friend. Two of my friends, who live in Ame, are absolutely obsessed with ramen. Left on their own, they would eat nothing else, and probably die of malnutrition. Just like you, I would wager. But, unlike you, they cannot visit Konoha whenever they want a bowl from Ichiraku. He really is the best in the known world, you know, but I think the Hokage would frown on foreign ninja making regular ramen runs. So, whenever I am in Konoha for the exams, I make sure to buy as much as I can and seal it so that it stays fresh until I can deliver it to them…." Konan trailed off, bemused, as tears welled up in Naruto's eyes.

"Tha- That's just so sad dattebayo!" he sobbed, sympathetic tears dripping down his face, "To only have the food of the gods once every few years… There can be no greater evil in this world!" The tears abruptly vanished as a thought occurred to him. "Hey, hey! I live in Konoha! If you teach me the seal, I could send you guys ramen whenever you want dattebayo! Wouldn't that work?"

Konan giggled quietly at his changing expressions, mouth concealed behind a raised hand. "It is very kind of you to offer, Naruto, but I don't think it would work. For two reasons. First off, I doubt you have the sealing skills. Secondly, if you're constantly sending scrolls to Ame, wouldn't the Hokage think you had been replaced with a spy?" Although the thought of the Hokage's intelligence division trying to find the significance of a dozen bowls of ramen headed for Hidden Rain was rather amusing.

"If I get permission first, then they won't think I'm a spy, right?" Naruto reasoned, displaying a potentially unhealthy amount of faith in the good nature of his fellow man, "And Jiraiya-sensei may be a jerk and a pervert, but he's still taught me a lot about sealing, even though I've only known him for a few weeks. Your storage seal is no problem dattebayo!"

"Jiraiya, eh?" Konan's expression was utterly unreadable, "Do you think I could speak to him? We met a long time ago, during the Third Great War, not on opposite sides, before you ask. I was only ten years old at the time, and had no ninja training whatsoever. He saved my life, and the lives of my closest friends, when we found ourselves trapped on a battlefield. I haven't seen him in a long time."

"I dunno if I should," Naruto wasn't sure, but he didn't think it was a good idea to show the jonin-sensei of Sakura's opponent their training grounds and teachers.

"I will buy you a bowl of ramen. Miso, with all the fixings," Konan bribed slyly.

"Done!" Naruto had trouble distrusting anyone, especially when they provided ramen.

So, when Naruto returned to training ground seven, he brought Konan along. "Hey, guys!" he shouted to them with typical exuberant disregard for the rules of polite society, "This lady says she knows Jiraiya from way back! She wants to talk to him dattebayo! Says it's important." As far as Naruto was concerned, few things were more important than reuniting with an old friend. Ramen and beating Sasuke at anything also featured high on that very short list.

Jiraiya, however, seemed to disagree, as he reacted with cautious and comical dismay. "What? Oh, man, I swear I used protection! It's not my fault, I swear! But, uh, I do have enough money to help support the kid, if it comes to that…" He abruptly fell silent, as Konan's expression cycled rapidly from confused to shocked to frighteningly blank. Square geometric patterns spread across her skin as a rustling sound filled the trees surrounding the group of ninja. Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke instinctively drew together for mutual protection, but Konan's ire was not directed at them.

"You don't remember? YOU DON'T REMEMBER?!" The second repetition was at a shriek, the first time Naruto had heard her voice raise from her usual quiet tone. Many miles away, in Amegakure, several extremely powerful ninja felt a sudden urge to crawl under a rock and hide there for a few months, even though they didn't have a concrete reason why. It was pure instinct. "Do you really? So, you don't remember saving my life. The lives of my friends. I suppose you also don't remember leaving us for dead, either? In that war-torn hellhole? For FIFTEEN YEARS? Would it have been so onerous, oh gallant Lord Jiraiya, to check once a decade on your old students? Is that too much for your busy schedule? You disgust me! Coming here was a mistake; I should not have bothered with someone like you." The rustling sound turned… sharp, somehow.

"Konan? You're alive?" Jiraiya sounded like he'd been punched in the gut, "You're alive! Hahaha!" He seized the kunoichi from Rain in a bone-crushing hug, sheer audacity saving him from retaliation, "I- I thought you were dead! How are you not dead? I saw the bodies!" His elation rapidly transformed to suspicion. Konan responded by pulling the flower from her hair and cradling it in one palm. Although she remained motionless, the flower unfolded itself into a featureless sheet of paper, before reforming into a simple origami crane. While unexpected and kind of cool, the other ninja weren't certain how this confirmed her identity, but to Jiraiya it did, as the smile returned to his face. If Jiraiya trusted her, the other jonin were at least willing to extend the benefit of the doubt. "It really is you! I can't believe it! Damn, someone went to a lot of trouble to fake your deaths."

"There were a few close calls along the way, but I assure you that I remain among the living," Konan assured the group, "And neither I nor my village, to my knowledge, hold any enmity toward Konoha. In fact, since you apparently did not know of our survival, Jiraiya-sensei, I can say that the opposite is true. And, to answer the question you were about to ask, sensei, the reason I believe you is that you had no way of knowing I was in the village until a few minutes ago. Even a master ninja like yourself isn't that good of an actor, to fake a story so quickly. Plus, that one-eyed guy wouldn't have been preparing to stab me in the back when I attacked you if you wanted to manipulate me. No one puts together a plan that complex with no words or sign language exchanged." Kakashi, who had indeed positioned himself behind Konan, undetected (so he had thought), took a few artificially casual steps back and reopened his book.

"Yeah, so you know that I know that you know that I know that we slightly trust each other, blah, blah, blah," Jiraiya's face was consumed by a massive grin, "Sometimes I think being a great ninja isn't worth all the paranoia, when two old friends can't even meet without having a buddy along for safety! Regardless, it's great to see you again! How are you? How're Nagato and Yahiko? It's been way too long!

"See for yourself," Konan offered, the markings slowly vanishing from her skin as the rustling subsided. "Lord Pain, the ruler of the village hidden in the rain, formally extends an invitation to Uzumaki Naruto and any friends he wishes to bring to visit our fine home. I am certain, though, that he would want to see you as well, Jiraiya-sensei." The other ninja stared in shock. Hidden rain was incredibly insular. Chunin exams aside, no foreign ninja had been inside the Land of Rain in nearly six years. Their forces seemed to have an uncanny ability to pick out and eject spies, informants, and infiltrating ninja. To suddenly have an invitation to visit was unexpected, to say the least! And why was this 'Lord Pain' interested in Naruto, specifically? He'd never been within twenty kilometers of the Land of Rain, and Jiraiya had been careful to keep knowledge of the boy's status as Jinchuriki contained within the village.

"So you three really pulled it off," Jiraiya put off his questions for later, in favor of catching up with his old student, "Old Hanzo never knew what hit him, eh? So which one is this 'Lord Pain'? Did Yahiko achieve his big dreams? Or has Nagato finally stepped out of his friend's shadow?"

"You will just have to see for yourself," Konan's smile turned slightly sad, "Melodramatic idiot that he is, Lord Pain would doubtlessly prefer to reveal his identity himself."

"Huh. That… really doesn't narrow it down between them," Jiraiya muttered with mild discontent.

"Uh, Lord Jiraiya, who is this?" Kakashi finally got a word in edgewise.

"Oh, uh, where'd my manners go and die?" Jiraiya joked, "Guys and girl, this is Konan, of Amegakure. I saved her and two of her friends, Nagato and Yahiko, back during the Third Great Ninja War. They'd been trapped on a battlefield, between the sannin and Hanzo of the Salamander himself and I got them out. Barely. He was a bit before you kids' time, but Hanzo was probably the strongest person in the world during the war. Less so more recently; age catches up to everyone eventually. I gave them a little training so they wouldn't be in the same situation again, hopefully, and resumed my duties with Konoha. But, a little over a year later, when I sent one of my most trusted agents to check on them, he brought back their… remains, in storage scrolls. You never know for sure unless you see the body, I know, but I saw the bodies! I really had no idea… But I can say that I trust them without reservation, assuming they haven't become mass-murderers or something?"

"No more so than any other ninja," Konan confirmed, "It was not easy to unseat the tyrant Hanzo." The paper crane unfolded itself again. "When you wish to set a time and place, if I am no longer in the village, write the information on this and leave it somewhere outdoors." She handed it to Naruto. "It will find its way to me. Now, if you will excuse me, I believe Jiraiya and I have some catching up to do." She practically dragged the sannin away, ignoring Sasuke's faint sound of protest. If Jiraiya was gone, that meant a full day with Gai, and no sane person wanted that!

With a trip to Amegakure scheduled for after the conclusion of the exams, and the promise of spy training to glean as much information as possible from the experience lurking in the near future, team seven continued to train for the tournament much in the same way they had before. Sasuke, however, added in practice dealing with extensive water jutsu use with Tenzo and Kakashi, and Sakura wheedled a powerful earth-style technique out of Jiraiya, Earth style: Dark Swamp. The useful technique produces an area of soupy, sticky mud that can be used to incapacitate or even drown an unsuspecting foe, which the user can stand on as easily as solid ground. The jutsu scales with chakra investment, which would have made it perfect for Naruto if he had any talent at all for earth style. But, before they knew it, and far sooner than any member of team seven might have liked, the day of the tournament arrived.

The genin of team seven showed up early and entered the contestants' box, a special set of seats set aside for the chunin hopefuls, but they were still the last to arrive. The friends sat, unaware of the rumble of sound that swept around the arena at their arrival. The exam tournaments are a major spectator event. Few circumstances allow a ninja village to openly advertise the strength of their soldiers to the Daimyo and public, but the exams do. Also, the nobility of every land in the elemental nations, great or small (Amegakure exempted, as it never had nobility, even under Hanzo), are fond of blood sports and gambling, and the chunin exam finals help to scratch their itch for carnage and blood money. Furthermore, the last genin team to have all three members reach the final tournament the first time they competed were the sannin themselves, and comparisons were invariably drawn.

Sasuke was likened to a more trustworthy Orochimaru, never mind that the two have very few personality traits, preferred tactics, or ninjutsu in common. Sakura was compared to Tsunade, even though the young girl was training to become a ninjutsu mistress, and had no interest whatsoever in medicine. Naruto was touted as the next Jiraiya, even though the jinchuriki's tactics, although not his personality, were closest to what Orochimaru had employed at that age. Misdirection, clone tricks, and kenjutsu were all essential parts of Naruto's and a young Orochimaru's arsenals.

While the bets were tallied, Naruto and Kankuro made their way down to the arena floor and faced off, narrowed blue eyes boring a hole into the Suna genin's featureless visor. Naruto thought about saying something, but he remembered what had happened to Lee and Neji when they started talking, and the demon vessel decided to hold his tongue. When the proctor of the third exam, a nondescript and heavily scarred jonin named Raido, stepped back, Kankuro promptly ignored over fifty years of tactical doctrine and charged Naruto, a wide hidden blade extending from the knuckles of each gauntlet. Suna's standard tactics dictate that a ninja puppet-master is most effective at long distance. There, the ninja can focus on controlling his man-sized, heavily armed puppet (or puppets, if he is skilled enough) without worrying about melee combat. Kakashi and Hayate had assumed Kankuro would follow these tried-and-tested tactics, and coached Naruto accordingly. So, when Kankuro chose to engage in melee combat, without so much as a boast, it caught Naruto off guard.

After their earlier encounter, the Konoha genin had read his opponent as a cocky and cruel person, who liked to gloat and talk down to his foes. Based on Kankuro's treatment of Konohamaru, Naruto's teammates had supported and helped to construct this analysis. The faceless, implacable warrior Naruto instead faced nearly skewered the jinchuriki with a single lunge, but Naruto managed to substitute with a rock from the edge of the arena, and buy enough time to draw his (now proper steel) sword to defend himself.

The next shock was that, whatever Kankuro's weapons and armor were made of, it was far harder, tougher, and lighter than steel. The Suna genin was extremely light on his feet, considering his heavy gear, far beyond what manipulating a heavier armor with chakra strings would allow him to simulate. Furthermore, every clash of their blades left deep notches in Naruto's sword, but not even a scratch on the armored ninja's weapons. Kankuro easily had the upper hand in a straight-up sword on knife fight, at least until Naruto charged his weapon with wind chakra and cut through an attacking gauntlet knife like the metal offered no resistance at all.

Kankuro, realizing that the next sword-stroke would sunder his protective shell, set off several explosive seals, prepared as most ninja do on slips of paper for easy use, at point-blank range. The Suna genin, weighed down by his armor, which also protected him from the blast, was mostly unharmed. Naruto, by contrast, was thrown across the arena by the force, giving Kankuro time to draw a scroll from his holster, and unseal from it a clattering, four-armed, bladed marionette made of the same material as his armor. With a flick of his wrist, he animated the puppet with chakra strings, sending it to its feet with clattering, boneless grace.

In his heavy armor, Kankuro was not especially agile, and could not dodge Naruto's wind-enhanced slashes. His primary defense was sturdy protection, rather than speed and reflexes. The fast, light puppet, on the other hand, had no such problems. Kankuro's fingers danced, and the puppet danced with them, leaving dozens of shallow cuts on the jinchuriki and easily dodging the return strikes, bending and twisting in ways that would cripple any human. After a few minutes of this, Kankuro spoke the first words either genin had in the match.

"Ok, I give up trying to figure this out. How the hell are you still standing?" The words were laden with frustration and confusion.

"Waddaya mean?" Naruto asked, "I get hurt worse than this when I ask Sakura out and she turns me down dattebayo!"

"All my blades are poisoned!" Kankuro exclaimed, "Nothing lethal, but you've been dosed with enough to knock out three camels! Three camels! And you haven't slowed down a bit!"

"I heal fast," Naruto shared, "Always have."

"That doesn't explain how you shrugged off that much poison at all," Kankuro grumbled.

"If it helps, when I was like six I got into the orphanage's cleaning supplies," Naruto added unhelpfully, "I drank half a bottle of window cleaner and didn't even realize it was supposed ta be bad for you until years later. Actually tastes pretty good, but Iruka-sensei made me promise to stop drinking stuff like that. Something about other people copying what I did and getting really sick."

"So you're a freak of nature. Of course you are. Because you couldn't just be a kenjutsu expert with a jutsu that can cut through freaking metal like paper. That would be too easy. Sometimes I think the Kami find my suffering amusing," the puppet-master lamented the unfairness of the world, as he drew his second scroll, "I was hoping to save this for the next round, but it looks like I'll need it here. Naruto, meet Tortoise. The puppet you've already seen, Crow, is based on my sensei's designs, but I built Tortoise from the frame up. So, as a cheesy puppet theatre villain might say, it's showtime!"

Tortoise actually resembled the animal whose name it bore fairly closely, It had a bulky, pyramidal body of the same gleaming metal, and four curved, stocky legs at the corners. Four circular openings, one near the center of the base of each side, were concealed behind tightly fitted metal doors. The geometric puppet turned one of these doors toward Naruto and opened it briefly, releasing a smoke bomb, followed by a spray of senbon. Naruto defended by creating a shadow clone and using it as a meat shield. This gave the jinchuriki an idea. A wonderfully awful idea that would probably confirm Kankuro's suspicion that the Kami were out to get him. "The Art of the Shadow Doppelganger!" Shouting the jutsu name was a bit showy, but worth it for the priceless expression on Kankuro's… It was then that Naruto remembered that Kankuro wears a full helmet. Oh, well. At least the jutsu still worked.

Kankuro looked about, his body language conveying fatalistic despair, "Did you say shadow doppelgangers? Or just regular doppelgangers? 'Cause that's kind of an important difference."

One of the doppelgangers responded by drawing a kunai, wrapping an explosive-sealed tag around the hilt and throwing it to explode against Tortoise's side with a hollow report, knocking Kankuro about. Naruto's homemade explosive seals, vetted by a master of the art, were much higher quality than Kankuro's mass-produced ordinance. "Shadow doppelgangers," Naruto confirmed, as every single duplicate drew an explosive tag with each hand.

"I think I'm just gonna surrender now," Kankuro offered in a high pitched voice. One bomb was no problem, but there was no way he could survive that many explosions. "With all these bombs, I'd lose a limb at least. Getting promoted ain't worth that. I give up."

Kankuro trudged heavily toward the stairs, while Naruto performed an impromptu happy dance that had Hinata swooning in her seat, before leaping for the stands. He reached the competitors' box in a single bound, and landed lightly next to Sasuke. "Hah, waddaya think of that, you jerk?" Naruto taunted his teammate, "When Hinata kicks your ass, I'll get promoted and you won't. Then I'll be able to order you around dattebayo! This is gonna be great!" Hinata, a few seats over, nearly fainted again upon hearing the off-handed compliment, fleeing the stands for the sake of her composure and odds of being conscious for her match.

"Hn. When I defeat your friend, we will face one another in the semifinals," Sasuke disagreed, "And then I will progress to the finals, where I will win this pathetic excuse for a challenge to my skills." The Uchiha was generally not given to boasting beyond what he knew his abilities to be, but Naruto had a special gift for getting under his skin. As Sasuke forestalled any further wordplay by hopping the railing around the box and dropping to the arena floor, he privately admitted that Hinata actually had a lot of advantages over him.

Before the massacre, the Uchiha and the Hyuga clan had been fierce rivals. Both are ancient clans with a long and storied history. Both have powerful kekkei genkai seated in their eyes, and unique advantages over the other. Along with the equally formidable Senju clan, the Uchiha founded Konoha, and all other clans joined later, granting the Uchiha impressive political power. However, unlike the sharingan, the byakugan is always passed down to everyone with Hyuga blood, and it is usable from the moment a Hyuga has enough chakra to turn his kekkei genkai on, giving the Hyuga superior numbers of powerful ninja. In contrast, while the sharingan also grants greater prowess in ninjutsu than an Uchiha could achieve without it, the kekkei genkai must be awoken and honed in battle and training before it becomes truly useful.

Now, it seemed someone wanted to revive that old conflict one last time, probably Hyuga Hiashi, Hinata's father and the current and highly influential Hyuga clan head. Hiashi and Sasuke's father Fugaku had been known, within the clans, for a legendary grudge spawned when Sasuke's mother, Mikoto, had turned Hiashi down in favor of dating her future husband. Sasuke thought, based on what little he knew of the man, Hiashi might be the type to reach for a vicarious last triumph through his daughter.

Against an ordinary Hyuga, Sasuke could have dusted off the successful anti-Hyuga tactics from his clan's library and won with ease. As Hinata had demonstrated against her cousin, most Hyuga have no defense against powerful ranged jutsu, and he could have forced a surrender with shuriken and fire blasts.

However, Hinata had displayed considerable prowess with water style, which can out-power any fire jutsu that is not significantly stronger than the water technique used. If that wasn't bad enough, she was the heiress to the clan, which meant she could know the most powerful of the clan techniques. Sasuke had to be prepared for her to know the Heavenly Rotation, a near-impenetrable but thankfully chakra-intensive defensive jutsu, and the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms, a special, high-speed hand-to-hand technique capable of shutting off his ability to use ninjutsu for hours or days. Plus, this didn't take into account lesser secret techniques not mentioned in the Uchiha library!

Even in the academy, the one person who Sasuke could not defeat in taijutsu was Hinata, which logically meant he had to keep his distance. Hinata had been trained in the gentle fist since she learned to walk, and Sasuke simply could not match her close-combat abilities, having not started training seriously until he entered the academy shortly before his seventh birthday. However, her water-style and enhanced vision meant that not only were his fire and shuriken attacks unlikely to work, but it was more than possible that he was outmatched at long range. The only distance that Sasuke had any advantages in was at sword's-length, and it was at this distance that he resolved to keep his foe. If he could do that, and it was a pretty uncertain if, he might be able to eke out a win through superior control of the distance between himself and Hinata.

With this in mind, Sasuke drew his katana before the match even began, situating himself into a classical kendo stance opposite Hinata's own picture-perfect gentle fist form. As one, both genin poured chakra into their eyes, blood-red sharingan blazing into icy, metallic byakugan. The paired, dark teardrops in Sasuke's eyes swirled lazily about, in time with the pulsing veins that fed blood and chakra into Hinata's own kekkei genkai. Sasuke briefly reflected on how odd it was that Hinata, who was usually timid as a mouse, could look so fierce with her eyes active. Then, he had no more time to reflect as Raido told them to begin, and "Please don't try to do anything permanent to each other. I'd rather not have to step in."

The second Raido fell silent, Hinata lunged forward, seeking a quick end to the fight. Sasuke was forced to retreat, fending his opponent off as best he could with superior reach. Gaining control of the tempo of their duel, he went on the attack, charging his sword with stunning electricity. Hinata parried with a flimsy barrier of chakra, feet already in motion, and spun about in a rapid circle, the barrier expanding outward and flinging Sasuke and his attack away before the fragile defense could be breached. She did know Heavenly Rotation after all, and now Sasuke was out of distance and vulnerable. Although Hinata gave no outward sign, Sasuke's sharingan picked up a mass of blue-tinged chakra gathering at her mouth, confirming that she also knew sealless water style techniques. Against anyone else, she would have had a devastating sucker punch, but against an Uchiha the surprise attack was merely dangerous. Sasuke supposed she might not have done as much research as he did.

Forewarned by his chakra sight, Sasuke was able to raise a wall of earth to block a volley of water bullets, using a jutsu he'd copied during a spar with Sakura. Without an earth affinity, it used a hefty chunk of his stamina, but he thought it was better to be tired than take the hit. Against most foes, he could have used the wall to hide his movements long enough to set up an ambush, but against a Hyuga such tactics are futile. With this in mind, Sasuke used his own kekkei genkai to track Hinata as she flanked the wall, substituted in closer using a nearby tree branch, and entered his safest distance again, trying to put the Hyuga back on the defensive with a swift lunge. Instead, a powerful, invisible bludgeon of raw chakra erupted from Hinata's palm and slammed into his chest, feeling like one of Rock Lee's devastating punches. Presumably galvanized by the perceived danger, the world suddenly slowed down, at least twice as much as it had the last time his sharingan had grown. Sasuke felt like he was moving underwater, and was unable to react to the input of his newly enhanced senses in time to do anything but witness every moment of his defeat. Before the Uchiha could recover from the blow, Hinata slipped under his guard and slammed a series of pinpoint strikes into his arms and legs, which promptly went numb. Sasuke managed to balance himself in a kneeling position, wheezing for breath, but the Uchiha couldn't feel his arms, or anything below the knee.

"I concede," he reluctantly stated. "I cannot move. Continuing would be both foolish and one-sided." Sasuke briefly considered his condition, and that in light of how his match had gone, he was really, really, really looking forward to watching Hinata smash Naruto flat. Swallowing his pride, he spoke out over the protests of his badly bruised ego. "Uh, I don't suppose you, I don't know, can undo this or something? I'd, um, kind of like to watch my teammates' other matches. If you can help."

"O-oh! Of course!" Hinata gently laid her hands across his arms and legs briefly, sending a warm wave of energy to cut through the icy numbness. "You should be f-fine in a few minutes." She offered him a hand up. "Um, I'll give you a hand up to the s-stands? If you want?" The last sentence came out as more of a squeak than anything.

Sasuke considered the offer briefly. He wasn't the type to hold a grudge against anyone but Naruto, and he hadn't really expected to win. Besides, Hinata was nice and reasonably harmless (now that the match was over), and as his well-ignored hormones pointed out, she had already hit puberty faster and harder than any of her peers. Plus, she had defeated him with ease, and wasn't even sweating. Although the Sasuke didn't know it, his parents, Mikoto and Fugaku, had met in nearly identical circumstances twenty-five years ago, and the young Fugaku had sworn then and there that there was only one girl in the world for him: the one who had beaten him senseless. It isn't that they are masochistic, but Uchiha men have proven time and again that they are hard-wired to find power very attractive. Between exhaustion and close proximity to what a small voice in the back of Sasuke's mind pointed out was a very pretty girl, hormones and a neglected desire for friendship won out against his carefully cultivated, habitually aloof personality. "Thank you, Hinata."

While Hinata helped Sasuke limp back up to the stands, Temari and Kabuto squared off for their own match. As she had against Shino, the Suna genin opened with a massive blast of wind, aiming to slam Kabuto into the wall and end the match in a single move. Her jutsu whipped up a huge cloud of blinding dust, accompanied by the sound of something heavy hitting the wall of the arena with a crunch. However, when the dust settled, Kabuto was nowhere in sight. Temari cast about for her opponent, left, right, behind, up? This left her unprepared when Kabuto burst out of the ground below her, and simultaneously disarmed her and sent her staggering backwards with a stunning blow to the face. Temari was not bad at taijutsu, for a genin, but she had focused on ranged combat over hand-to-hand skill for most of her career. What little close combat training she had done had involved using her huge fan as a weapon. Kabuto, experienced from years as a genin, knew exactly what he was doing up close and personal, and could use basic medical techniques in inventive ways to disrupt his opponent's body. The entire match took about a minute and a half, and ended with Temari immobile in the dirt while her apologetic opponent treated the wounds he'd inflicted.

Soon enough, the final match of the first round was set to begin: Haruno Sakura vs. Karin. The Rain ninja, fiddling with her spectacles, kicked off hostilities with a barrage of insults. "You sure you want to do this, princess?" Karin was not impressed by the look of her opponent. Sakura tried, especially recently, to take all aspects of her training seriously. That said, she was the first ninja to come out of the Haruno clan, a family known primarily as merchants and bankers. She also was still trying to impress Sasuke, even if she now was waiting for him to come to her. Her well-used armor (even if she hadn't taken it on a lot of missions, frequent spars with Rock Lee laid a lattice of scratches and scuffs over the dull metal sections) and fierce expression provided an odd contrast with her lovingly tended, bright pink hair and light cosmetics. "I wouldn't want to muss up your perm or something. That'd just be rude."

As Naruto could attest to, Sakura had a quick, hot temper. While it wasn't easy to make her lose it, certain subjects, like Sasuke, Ino, or her hair (especially after Orochimaru's disturbing revelations), were sure to set her off. "Oh, you're one to talk, dye job!" Sakura raged, "At least my hair's natural. What, couldn't stand out from the crowd without glow-in-the-dark enhancement?"

"I've dyed nothing, you bitch!" Apparently, Karin's ire was as easily provoked, "This is all natural, just like the knuckle sandwich you just ordered! I'm gonna pound you into dust!"

"You know, they say profanity is a sign of a lacking mind," Sakura pointed out in a deliberately superior tone, "Couldn't you think of a creative insult, at least? If it helps, I've heard the one about my hair twice today already." Sakura scoffed at her opponent's wit, "I've been insulted by professionals, you kiddie leaguer." Seated in the stands with her parents, Yamanaka Ino, self-proclaimed chief rival for Sasuke's affections and source of many of the professional insults, tried to figure out whether Sakura had just given her a compliment, albeit without success.

"Give the word already, examiner guy!" Karin urged Raido, voice dripping with bloodlust, "There's only one way to settle this." As he nodded, and escaped the midst of the rapidly developing cat fight (Everyone in the audience would have agreed it was dripping with cattiness), Karin was already halfway through a seal sequence that Sakura thought looked extremely familiar… Hadn't Sasuke tried the same jutsu against Kakashi, right before he'd fallen unconscious after a long and exhausting battle against a worthy adversary?

Unlike Sasuke's tiny tongue of flame, Karin breathed out not one, not two, but five bright orange balls of fire, each as tall as their creator, the facial features of a fearsome dragon outlined in darker, red flames. Generated in sequence, the swiftly moving dragon head bombs tracked Sakura across the arena as the Konoha kunoichi ran for her life to evade the explosive projectiles, which struck the wall with enough force to shake the stands. Up in the competitors' box, still leaning on Hinata's shoulder for reasons he couldn't have articulated even to himself, Sasuke swore quietly, muttering in envy. On a good day, he could use the same jutsu once, and this Karin, no older than the Uchiha, could use it five times? She could throw away that much chakra on an opening move? It just wasn't fair.

Sakura actually wasn't in as much trouble as she could have been. The dragon head bomb jutsu is devastating at most ranges, having both decent coverage and projectile speed. However, like most fire techniques, it is easier to avoid at long distances, when the target has more time to react. A momentary lull in the incoming fire as Karin went through the signs for a new jutsu gave Sakura the opportunity to put a plan into action. Like Naruto, Karin had deep reserves, which she could use for powerful offensive jutsu. Like Sasuke, she seemed to prefer fire techniques. However, unlike Sasuke, Karin didn't seem to have a sensory ability to cover fire style's weaknesses. The primary downside to high level fire jutsu is that they produce a lot of heat and light, obscuring the caster's vision as the jutsu is fired. Sasuke could compensate for this with his kekkei genkai; Karin couldn't, and it was throwing off her aim. After the first shots, the Rain Kunoichi had become noticeably less accurate. Sakura thought that she might have another way to exploit this drawback. Naruto was better at this sort of on-the-fly trickery, but Sakura had spent enough time with him to pick up plenty of useful tricks to supplement what she'd already learned in the academy. When Karin finished her sign chain and drew in a deep breath, Sakura made a gesture herself, and carefully partitioned her chakra. While difficult, it is not impossible to use multiple ninjutsu at the same time, as long as you have excellent chakra control and only need signs for one of them. Sakura might not have hefty reserves like Naruto, or Sasuke's ability to perform any jutsu (with practice) after seeing it once, but in technical skill and chakra control her teammates could not keep up.

Karin's next attack took the form of a seething tide of fire that swept across the arena, reducing the stand of trees in the corner, planted to provide varied terrain and substitution fodder, to ash. Up in the stands, Sasuke practically turned green with envy. He recognized Karin's jutsu as the Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation, an S-ranked ninjutsu the Uchiha clan library touted as one of the pinnacles of fire style, only available to the greatest masters of the art. Sasuke knew it would be years before he could even attempt this jutsu, and he would never be able to do so more than a few times per day. Using the immensely powerful technique had winded Karin, but she clearly had only used up a small portion of her reserves so far. Ignoring his own genetic advantages, specifically the ability to learn ninjutsu and taijutsu after seeing them once, which Sasuke's sparring partners all would have agreed was equally unfair, Sasuke proceeded to descend into a black mood.

However, he was distracted from his discontented sulking when four Sakuras proceeded to jump through the dying inferno without so much as a scorch mark and attack Karin with fists and knives, forcing the Rain ninja to evade. How had Sakura shrugged off one of the most powerful fire jutsu ever created? And gotten doppelgangers, usually so fragile as to vanish after a single hit, to become just as tough. Unless… "Oh, that is clever," Sasuke admitted quietly. He almost hadn't figured out Sakura's trick. Sometimes he forgot that basic illusions worked perfectly well on almost everyone else.

"Doppelgangers!" Hinata whispered next to him, pitching her voice even lower than normal so that Karin wouldn't hear, "They're just ordinary doppelgangers. Since they don't have a physical form, it takes a physical attack to dispel them. They just passed right through the fire." Sasuke confirmed her insights with an Uchiha Grunt, the mildly impressed version.

Down on the arena floor, Karin parried an incoming doppelganger attack, only for the illusion to vanish upon contact with her kunai. Drawing a handful of shuriken, the rain kunoichi removed the remaining chakra constructs. Scanning the arena, she was unable to spot any sign of Sakura amidst the dying embers. Without any fuel, the fire could not sustain itself. "Where are you, princess?" Karin asked the empty air, "Time to find out! You can't hide from me! Earth style-"

"Dark Swamp?" Sakura offered her foe. When the fire hit, the Konoha ninja had sent her doppelgangers as a distraction, and sunk beneath the earth. While Karin was distracted, Sakura snuck behind her underground, preparing an ambush. "So, give up yet?"

"Screw you, Princess Bubblegum!" Karin exclaimed, immersed up to her neck in the thick, slimy mud. Despite her thrashing, she was unable to gain any traction, and the viscous liquid resisted her movements well enough to keep her in the center of the small swamp. As Karin started to bring her hands together for more signs, Sakura ended the jutsu, reverting the disgusting mud to hard-packed dirt. Karin, still imprisoned, was now held immobile.

"Unless you can teleport or something, I'm gonna take that as a yes," Sakura declared with vicious glee, "Examiner, sir, you want to call it, or should we watch her struggle a little more? This is kinda funny." After confirming Karin's inability to free herself, Raido complied and ended the first round of the final exam, before announcing that there would be a short break between the rounds to allow competitors a chance to recover a bit, as there was no sense in someone failing due to something as preventable as dehydration. Left unsaid was that the first round had contained several upsets, namely Sakura, Naruto, and Kabuto winning against genin who were superior to them on paper. The bookies needed time to recalculate odds and take new wagers.

For Hyuga Hinata, this was probably the worst thing they could have done, as far as her chances of victory went. While the other genin got water, plotted last-minute strategies, and generally did sneaky, sensible things, Hinata kept busy psyching herself out. She didn't doubt her skills, not anymore. Defeating Neji and Sasuke, when she really hadn't expected to be able to last a minute against either them, had taken care of any lingering insecurities. Her problem was that her next opponent was Naruto. She wanted to win, but not if it meant Naruto couldn't continue. Or what if, Kami forbid, she hurt him. Hinata had managed to avoid causing any permanent damage to Sasuke, but she thought Naruto had to be stronger than his teammates. What if she had to hurt him badly to stop him? She couldn't do that! However, as Hinata resolved to quit and spare her crush, Naruto noticed her distressed expression. Socially oblivious though he was, Naruto had been Hinata's friend for the better part of four years, and the Hyuga girl was not trying to hide her feelings.

"Hey, Hinata, what's wrong?" Naruto asked, trying to sound sympathetic, "You look like somebody killed your cat or something." He may have tried to be sympathetic, but he didn't actually pull it off very well.

"Wha?" Hinata was confused. How had her pet gotten involved? "S-somebody hurt Neko-chan?!"

"Uh, no. No!" the jinchuriki backpedaled rapidly, "You just looked really sad and like you were trying to make a decision about something, and I thought maybe somebody we knew died 'cause you looked real sad, but nobody we knew died that I know about, so I just thought maybe it wasn't a person but, uh, that's not really the point dattebayo! You're upset. Something's wrong. You wanna tell me what it is? Maybe I can help, 'cause I'm awesome!"

"What- What if you're the problem?" Hinata asked in a very small voice, almost inaudible under the murmur of the crowd.

"I'm the problem?" Naruto was dismayed, "What did I do?" He asked seriously, "If you tell me I can stop dattebayo! I'll do it right now!"

"I-it isn't like that," the Hyuga shrunk into her seat, worrying at a fingernail with her teeth, "It's just… We've been friends for a long t-time, and I- we- neither of us has a lot of other friends, and now we've have to fight each other, and, and," By this point her silvery eyes were practically the size of dinner plates, shining with unshed tears at the very thought of what she was about to say next, "What if we hurt each other? I don't think I could live with that… I should just forfeit now. Then everybody would be h-happy." She lowered her head in resignation, squeezing twin droplets from her now-closed eyes. "I c-can't fight my friends. I just…" In hindsight, Hinata realized she should have predicted Naruto's response.

"You can't quit dattebayo!" he shouted into her face, placing a hand on each of her shoulders and shaking her back and forth to emphasize his point, "You never give up! I mean, it's one thing if it's like a tac-tic-al retreat or something, where you run away until you can come back and win later, but you never, ever just give up without a fight! You know how, in the second task, Sasuke and Sakura and me came out of it looking like we got run over by a horse or something? Well, we got attacked by an S-rank ninja who snuck in, Orochimaru. You've heard of him. We didn't wanna fight him, but we didn't have a choice dattebayo! He wouldda killed us if we hadn't. We're still here, 'cause we fought, even though we didn't want to, or think we could win. Not that I remember too much of the fight… I was knocked out for most of it, I think, but Sakura and Sasuke filled me in on the details later."

"Uh, I don't think I understand where you're going with this," Hinata admitted. It was an interesting story, but, "How is this like us fighting at all?"

Naruto realized he had gone off on a bit of a tangent, but he wasn't about to admit that to anyone but himself. "The point is that you can't give up! Not now! It isn't fair to me. I don't want to win if I don't earn it. An awesome guy like me has to do things the right way, after all. But more important, it isn't fair to you." He looked Hinata in the eyes, doing his best to be completely serious. "Since I've known you, you've always just assumed that other people are better than you. Neji, Sasuke, your kid sister Hanabi, even me. Don't deny it; you know it's true. But now, you've beaten Sasuke. You beat Neji. You're the one who gets to be awesome now! I can take a hit, just ask anyone who's ever fought me, and besides, I trust you, Hinata. You won't screw this up, so don't throw it away dattebayo! We're gonna fight, and it's gonna be epic, whoever wins. That's a promise! Uh, if it helps, just think of it as one of Kakashi-sensei's 'keep going until somebody drops or gets trapped' spars." As he finished, it occurred to Naruto that maybe he should have started from the last sentence. Was the other stuff really helpful? He was particularly unsure about the bits with Orochimaru, and the cat… But, Hinata seemed to straighten up, head held high, and although she was still chewing on her nails, her posture suggested it was now due to habit more than anything.

"W-we'll both do our best then, right?" Hinata asked, a hint of a smile on her face, "I wouldn't want you to hold back and let me win, just because you don't want to hit a girl or something like that." Having gotten the last word, she walked over to the stairs down to the arena, a new spring in her step. Naruto, left behind for the moment, was too busy devoting every bit of his self-admittedly unimpressive brain to one simple question: had Hinata of all people just teased him? Where had that come from?

**A.N. Here are the answers to a few questions that people who are familiar with the manga or anime might have:**

**To anyone who is wondering where Sakura's psychoanalysis came from, I would like to point out two things. First off, in the original source material, it is repeatedly stated that Sakura's only real competition in the brains department is Shikamaru, who is a certified genius of everything. Secondly, Sakura has spent most of her time in the academy as best friends with Yamanaka Ino, who is the heiress to an entire clan of ninja psychologists. Even if Sakura wasn't a voracious reader with a curious mind, she would have picked up some knowledge. Also, she has been stalking Sasuke for quite some time, and Naruto is not nearly as good at hiding his feelings as he thinks he is.**

**Also, I know that in the manga, Jiraiya meets Konan, Yahiko, Nagato, and Hanzo durin the second Great Ninja War. However, as I said in the AN at the beginning of this story, the chronology doesn't really work out there. So, in the interest of making sense, Kakashi and his contemporaries are in their early thirties, Konan and friends are around 23, and the sannin are in their fifties. The sannin were involved in the second and third ninja wars as a team, as was Hanzo. Konan, Nagato, and Yahiko were orphaned in the third war, not the second, and later rescued by Jiraiya from being poisoned by Hanzo's special ninjutsu when he tried to kill the sannin in battle.**

**Finally, I am not necessarily setting up romance between Hinata and Sasuke. They are both preteens, making this middle school romance at best. Such relationships, if you could call them that, are measured in hours and days. There will be no romance here between any characters, until/if I decide to do the three year time-skip that happens in the manga. I still haven't decided if the story will go that way or not. That said, giving Sasuke character development and letting Hinata be awesome makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, and the chance to do both at once was too tempting to pass up.**


	8. Nine on One

Uzumaki Naruto, genin of Konoha, was about to begin one of the most difficult fights in his life. Not the most difficult, as Orochimaru, Zabuza, and Haku occupied the first, second, and third slots on the genin's mental list, but this one was definitely number four. He was up against Hyuga Hinata, his long-time friend and a very powerful genin. The stakes? The winner would get to advance to the finals of the chunin selection exams, and have a much better chance to be promoted. Naruto had noticed that it was never explicitly stated that the victor got promoted, and he figured winning might not be the only thing the proctors considered, although he wasn't sure what else they were looking for. Regardless, he needed to save his fantasies about being promoted for later, because if he didn't concentrate completely on the fight ahead, he was probably going to lose.

Naruto felt confident in his own skills, but he'd just seen Hinata defeat Sasuke, who usually beat Naruto when they sparred, without much trouble. A month prior, she'd also defeated her cousin Neji, who was better in a straight fight than any other genin in the village, possibly aside from the scary and thankfully forfeited visitor from Suna, Gaara. If Naruto didn't take her seriously, he was going to lose, and fast. And if they both fought all-out, Hinata might still win. He needed a plan, and a good one, and he needed it fast. Although he wasn't aware of the parallels, Naruto's plotting quickly ran into the same roadblock that Sasuke's strategies for beating Hinata were unable to pass. Hinata's gentle fist made her extremely difficult to defeat up close. However, her water style jutsu and whatever that spinning thing she had done was (Naruto had no way of knowing the name of the Hyuga secret technique) made Hinata just as tough at a distance. Naruto's wind jutsu might be more powerful, but her kekkei genkai and defensive technique easily negated that advantage. In fact, the more he thought about it, the only places where Naruto knew he surpassed Hinata were in raw power. He knew he had considerably more chakra than his opponent, and he could take a hit far better than the young girl.

Naruto remembered reading somewhere that the Uzumaki clan, back when it was still a major power during the second Great Ninja War, was infamous for ninja who could recover from wounds that would kill just about anyone else and exceptional stamina. Although the genin wasn't sure who his parents were, he assumed that there was a reason he was called Uzumaki Naruto instead of one of the filler names given to orphans with totally unknown parents, and that that reason was also the source of his hardy body. So, if his advantages were in all in endurance, he needed a way to make her use lots of chakra, and hope that she got tired first. The spinning thing looked like it was made of chakra, and he didn't want her shooting at him with water jutsu, so that meant he needed to make her defend herself from stuff she couldn't block the usual way. How? Well, shadow doppelgangers had worked well against most of his previous opponents and sparring partners… It was a place to start, anyway.

With this half-formed strategy in mind, when Hinata and Naruto met on the arena floor, the boy prepared his jutsu before the match even began. The two genin bowed to each other, and assumed their stances, and the instant Raido told them to begin, Naruto immediately produced sixty doppelgangers, using (and largely wasting, as his control wasn't very good) enough chakra to kill Kakashi ten times over, and sent them to surround Hinata in a chaotic circle of blades, shuriken, punches, and kicks. He thought a simultaneous attack from all sides would force the girl to defend with her special jutsu, since there was no way someone could block an attack like that, right? Wrong.

Although this is not common knowledge, the byakugan does far more for a Hyuga than what they tell the rest of the world. As the Hyuga do say, the kekkei genkai does grant three hundred and sixty degrees of full-spectrum, telescopic, microscopic, chakra-sensitive, magnetic resonance vision. Effectively, a Hyuga can see through thin solid objects, see chakra, and detect minute details too small, far away for the unaided eye to see. They can see heat, sunlight, radio transmissions, hidden electronics, and dangerous radiation by picking up light above and below the visible spectrum. Furthermore, a Hyuga can see everything around them, with all of this detail, at the same time, and react to this input with the same speed that a powerful Uchiha can react to something within his narrower field of vision. The human brain is not meant to process this much information at once; trying to do so would overload one's visual cortex, and probably drive a person mad. This is why, while stolen sharingan are highly sought after, almost no one ever tries to implant a byakugan eye into themselves. The risks aren't worth the potential reward, as the kekkei genkai is not only in the eyes, but the brain as well. They aren't necessarily smarter than other people, but even the weakest Hyuga quite simply thinks faster than any outsider.

This is the main principle behind the Hyuga's secret jutsu: The fastest a ninja can ever move without some form of teleportation is the speed of thought. For a Hyuga, the speed of thought just happens to be much faster than for anyone else. With this extra speed, a clan member can use jutsu like the Eight Trigrams: Sixty-four Palms, a ritualized series of strikes that culminates with the user striking his or her hapless target sixty-four times, so quickly that every strike appears to happen simultaneously. The Heavenly Rotation combines this extra speed with gentle fist training, which requires that the user be able to manipulate chakra with any part of their body. Swirl chakra around with every inch of skin, using the clan speed to maintain the superhuman multi-tasking required, and attacks and jutsu will be thrown away. Even worse for Naruto, these baseline abilities are technically available to even the weakest Hyuga, although the clan leadership maintains power by keeping their powerful weapons more exclusive.

Hyuga Hinata, heir to the clan, has quite a bit of the greatest Hyuga gifts of chakra control, clarity of sight, and swiftness of mind. Her demeanor might not show it, but she possesses one of the strongest byakugan of her generation, and the skills to match. Hinata is not weak, by any definition of the word, and Naruto, both her crush and her greatest friend, had just said that he believed in her and her strength without reservation. Naruto's storm of fists and feet and steel did not land a single scratch.

Hinata seemed to float around the countless attacks. She didn't move any faster than her usual speed, but she always ended up in the one position that was free of danger, and every time she moved at least one doppelganger poofed out of existence, from a gentle fist strike, an intercepted projectile, or a razor-sharp, efficient needle of high-speed water. To be fair, Naruto was not especially fast for a genin, and he barely coordinated his attacks at all, leaving safe areas for the barest of seconds and even losing a few doppelgangers to friendly fire. However, Hinata was still fighting almost sixty people at the same time, and she was winning.

The real Naruto, for his part, froze for a few seconds in naked awe, mouth flapping open until he caught himself and closed it with an audible snap. Maybe encouraging Hinata hadn't been the smartest choice… He didn't regret helping her, but at the moment he wished he'd waited until after the match to give a pep talk. The doppelganger rush idea was a total bust, but at the rate they were dying he probably had a minute to think of a new plan. He couldn't throw around too many more doppelgangers, as his reserves probably wouldn't hold out, and if he tried to set a booby trap Hinata would see and avoid it. He could try a seal, though. Hinata wasn't trained in sealing, so she wouldn't be able to read what he was doing. He could conceal a few bombs inside a storage seal, but that might really hurt her, and despite what he'd said before he didn't want to do that.

So, in a moment of inspiration, he quickly sketched out a new seal on three blank sheets of paper, using a bleeding thumb as a pen. The seals were almost identical to the explosive seals he was so familiar with, but instead of the characters for heat and pressure, he inscribed the characters for force and light. He had no idea what these new seals would do, but they charged with chakra as readily as the original version, and they were bound to do less damage than a traditional exploding tag. He sealed the three modified tags away in storage seals he'd scratched into the blade of his sword in case he ever needed to store something there and got en garde, under the theory that Sasuke wouldn't have insisted on fighting Hinata with his sword (instead of jutsu or fists, which the Uchiha was equally proficient in) without a good reason. Just in time, too, as Hinata finished off the last of the doppelgangers and charged, covering her approach with a spray of the water needles. Sasuke, finally seeing the sign sequence, committed the jutsu to memory. If it was powerful enough for Hinata to have held it back as a secret weapon when she fought him, the Uchiha thought it was probably a jutsu worth knowing.

When Hinata closed, Naruto tried to fend her off with a fast cut. However, a fast cut for him was a slow, easy swing to the Hyuga, and she ducked with enough time to spare to immobilize Naruto's right arm with three quick strikes. He thought he heard a faint, deep voice snickering from the back of his mind as his arm went limp, but ignored it in favor of releasing and activating his custom seals. The tags lit up with brilliant orange light that seared into the backs of the boy's eyes before detonating with stunning force, throwing both ninja back. Naruto felt a sharp pain in his ears as the blast hit, and then he couldn't hear anything at all. His vision had been whited out by the tags, so all he could do was feel around him in the vague hope of running into Hinata before she did the same to him. He never stood a chance when Hinata came at him from behind and rendered him unconscious with pinpoint strikes. While she had been deafened as well, if bright lights were all it took to render a Hyuga's kekkei genkai unusable, they would never have earned their reputation as one of Konoha's mightiest clans. Not that Naruto had known at the time.

An unknown amount of time later, Naruto regained consciousness to a pair of warm hands resting on his ears, emitting a faint buzzing noise. He cracked an eye open, only to shut it immediately as the afternoon sun speared through his skull like a, uh, spear. At least, that was what it felt like. With a soft pop, the world filled with sound again, and the hands withdrew. Someone to his left prodded him roughly with a sandal.

"Hey, idiot. How're you feeling?" Sasuke sounded both amused and resigned, "You know, now that you've nearly crippled yourself for no reason and got pounded by a girl?"

"What happened?" Naruto groaned, levering himself upright. His eyes felt raw, everything sounded slightly funny, and he ached everywhere. "I feel like I was out for a while…"

"You were," Kabuto assured him from the other side, "Seriously, what were you thinking? Those improvised flash-bangs blew out your eardrums, and probably would have blinded you for good if I hadn't been on hand to regrow the insides of your eyes. We sell user-friendly versions of those for a reason, you know. You can pick them up cheap from at least six different weapon shops around the village, and the Konoha armory. There's no need make them yourself." Kabuto blew air between clenched teeth. "I swear, if I'd known I'd be patching up this many self-inflicted, crippling wounds, I'd have never joined the medical division. I feel like I'm treating nothing but the symptoms of stupidity, some days."

"Here," Sasuke shoved something made of paper and thin plastic into his teammate's hands, "Wear these. At least, if you want to see the final match." Naruto pawed blindly at the object, and unfolded it into a pair of disposable sunglasses, which he slipped on, and opened his eyes. The light still hurt a bit, but it was bearable, and he turned to see Sasuke wearing an identical, blocky accessory.

"After my match with Hinata, my sharingan got stronger. Something about the danger I felt like I was in," He explained tersely, "But it's been giving me migraines. According to Kakashi, I wasn't ready for the full power of the sharingan yet, so I have to wear these to reduce the strain until my eyes adjust and I can turn them off. Or I get a better-looking pair of sunglasses. He gave me the extra incase this set rips, but I think you probably need them more than I do." Nodding his thanks, Naruto turned to Kabuto, who seemed in good condition, aside from the bandages wrapped around his forehead instead of his Konoha headband, which was on the floor next to him.

"Kabuto, man, what happened to you?" Naruto addressed his next question to both of them, "And did I miss Sakura's next match?"

"Yes, but you didn't miss much," Kabuto grimaced ruefully, "She opened up on me with some earth bullets, and I only was able to dodge most of them. One clipped me on the forehead, and she dropped me into that swamp jutsu while I was trying to shake it off. The whole match took maybe thirty seconds. Kind of embarrassing, but them's the breaks I guess."

"Still, if you're feeling better, you'll get to watch Sakura and Hinata," Sasuke offered his teammate a hand up, head inclined toward the arena, "I'm looking forward to see who will win. Sakura's definitely got the tactics, but I don't think she was expecting to get this far, and Hinata is an absolute combat monster," The corners of his mouth twitched up slightly, "But then, I think you already figured that out. Based on the look on your face when she beat up about fifty of you at once."

"Like you did any better, you jerk!" Naruto got in Sasuke's face, as much as he could without knocking their eye protection off, "I lasted way longer than you did!" Sasuke responded with a derisive Uchiha Grunt.

"As if! She only spent ten seconds on each of you. I lasted a full minute by myself," he bragged, stepping back to get some personal space. "Man, it feels strange to be proud of that, though." Naruto glared at Sasuke. Sasuke glared at Naruto. They both cracked up. Naruto fell to the ground with a thud, laughing helplessly, while Sasuke did his best to bottle it in, his shoulders shaking with suppressed, slightly hysterical giggles.

"Look at us," Naruto gestured wildly with one hand, wiping off tears of merriment with the other. "Just so damn proud of how many seconds it took Hinata to kick our asses. All that work we did, and she just mows us down, with not a hair out of place. It kinda pisses me off, but at the same time, I'm glad she did so well, you know?" Sasuke just grunted again, but internally admitted that while he didn't know the feeling, he wanted to learn. Strange that after spending four years with nothing but his memories and monolithic goal, he found more and more people worming their way into his life. First Kakashi, then Naruto and Sakura, and now Hinata. And then, a thought occurred to the last loyal Uchiha in Konohagakure, something he had never before considered, but that in retrospect seemed so obvious he didn't understand why it never crossed his mind before.

Sasuke would probably never be a match for Itachi. More specifically, Sasuke would probably never be a match for Itachi alone. The Uchiha genin had always assumed that other people were bound to be weaker than him, as they were not Uchiha. If they fought Itachi, they would die, and their blood would be on the hands of the one who had led them into battle as much as their murderer. But, Naruto and Sakura won some of their spars against Sasuke, and Hinata had just proved herself more than a match for any of the three. Kami, Sakura and Kakashi together had defeated two A-ranked (jonin level) missing-nin. Earlier, Naruto and Sakura together had seriously hurt one of those same ninja. As she had been months ago, backup from Sakura was worth an A-ranked ninja! Maybe there was something to Kakashi's preaching about teamwork after all…

Filing away his thoughts for later, Sasuke turned to the arena, which was unexpectedly empty. A quick scan of the area showed Hinata and Sakura receiving last-minute encouragement from Kurenai and Tenzo, respectively. Sasuke thought that was slightly odd, as neither girl had any reason to lack confidence, so maybe they were discussing last-minute tactics? Or considering a jutsu that they hadn't perfected yet? He actually didn't know exactly what Sakura had learned over the past month, and although Hinata had displayed two new techniques already, Heavenly Rotation and that water needle jutsu, she might have learned a third. Either way, this match was going to be very interesting. Hopefully, there would be a useful new jutsu for him to copy.

Meanwhile, Naruto was having a moral crisis. Hinata had been his friend longer than anyone, so he should cheer for her. But, Sakura was on his team, and he wanted to ask her out, so he should cheer for her. If he cheered for Sakura, Hinata would feel bad, and probably lose her nerve. If he cheered for Hinata, Sakura would beat him up for being a traitor, and Sasuke would laugh (or at least watch and think it was funny). He could keep silent, but then Hinata would think he was sick or something, and lose focus, and Sakura would probably still beat him up. If he cheered for both of them, Sakura would beat him anyway, and they would both think that he's a wimp, 'cause he couldn't make up his mind! Well, if Sakura was going to beat him up no matter what, since he couldn't not cheer for Hinata, Naruto decided he might as well go out in a blaze of glory. "If I don't come back," He whispered to Sasuke, "tell sensei I died for my village."

"What?" Sasuke raised one eyebrow, "What the hell are you planning to do, idiot?"

"I'm gonna cheer for Hinata dattebayo!" Naruto grinned, before slipping into a black mood, "and then Sakura's gonna try and kill me."

"Hn," Sasuke acknowledged the conundrum with a noncommittal grunt, "I'll see what I can do."

"Yeah, I'm so dead- wait, what did you say?" Naruto couldn't believe his ears! Maybe Kabuto had put them back together wrong… "Did you just say you'd help keep Sakura from killing me? Are you… are you feeling alright dattebayo? Did that puppet guy poison you or something?"

"No," Sasuke growled back shortly. How did Naruto manage to be so irritating?! Couldn't he hear the first time? Well, maybe not, since he'd just regrown his eardrums. "If Sakura is angry at you, the two of you are more annoying together than you could ever be apart. Like Kakashi says, teamwork makes you more effective. Now, shut up and watch." As the boys were speaking, Sakura and Hinata had moved to the center of the arena, ready for their fight. Sasuke gazed into Sakura's eyes from the audience, hoping that his message genjutsu would work even with his eyes covered. Sakura, recognizing the technique from last time, didn't dispel it, eagerly awaiting the words.

"Naruto is going to cheer for Hinata," Sasuke's simulated voice whispered in her ears, "Don't get too mad at him. You know how they feel about each other, even if they're both too dense to admit it." Even Sasuke had noticed Hinata's feelings, and he was actively trying not to care. "And, uh, I hopeyouwin." The last three words he treated like a senbon wound; best to pull it out fast and get it over with. While Sasuke was sincere, he didn't want to encourage Sakura's obsession.

He might as well have lit a fire in her mind. If Sasuke was rooting for her, even if he didn't want anyone else to know it, she had to win. There was no other choice. Only one person was walking out of this arena, and Sakura was going to make certain it was her. The second Raido gave the starting signal, she arced a pair of shuriken at Hinata, following through into a hand sign. Dodging the blades wouldn't even take up a second, but that instant of extra time was all Sakura needed. Hinata came in low, arms extended for a gentle fist strike, only to pause a moment in puzzlement. Sakura was producing green chakra. Blue meant water style, brown meant earth style, red meant fire, grey meant wind, and yellow meant lightning, but what was green used for? In that moment of hesitation, Sakura's jutsu struck.

A thick beam of wood, tiny, leafy branches sprouting off the sides, erupted from the ground and connected with Hinata's stomach, punting the Hyuga across the arena with an involuntary cry of pain and surprise. Another pulse of chakra, and thick, thorny vines snaked out of the ground where she landed, binding Hinata in a prickly, clinging embrace. She tried to pull away, reflexively, but the thorns clung to her clothes and skin tenaciously, even as her mind caught up to the implications of what Sakura had just done. Stunned into temporary inaction, Hinata could only murmer the words circulating about the stadium. "Wood style." Wood style jutsu was what gave the legendary first Hokage the power to carve Konoha out of the warring states period, uniting the Senju and Uchiha clans under a single banner. It combined the strength of earth and the flexibility of water, with the power of life itself, and was said to be uniquely effective against the mightiest of demons. If Sakura had even a fraction of the power once wielded by Senju Hashirama, the first Hokage, she would be incredibly formidable. Fortunately for Hinata, a fraction seemed to be all Sakura possessed.

According to the unerring sight of the Byakugan, Sakura had used up most of her chakra on the two jutsu, and probably would not be able to use her kekkei genkai again today. Furthermore, the rapid loss of chakra had slowed her down, and she was only just now getting into range for a finishing blow, conserving the last of her strength. Sakura had almost won, but not quite. If she had chosen a more solid restraint, Hinata would have lost. However, perhaps to save chakra, Sakura had chosen thin vines. Difficult to break, but not so solid as to be immune to a sharp spike of chakra from the gentle fist.

As Sakura raised a weary fist to knock Hinata out, the Hyuga pulsed her chakra outward, and the vines fell away, severed in a dozen places. "You came very close to winning," she informed Sakura solemnly, "But now you are within the range of my divinations. It's over. Eight Trigrams Sixty-four Palms."

The first pair of strikes hit Sakura's shoulders simultaneously, forcing her hands to spasm open, rendering them temporarily a non-threat. This opened her up for the four blows that followed, buckling her legs so she could not escape. The eight strikes after that struck her torso in a single moment, driving the air from her lungs. Then came sixteen blows, knocking her backward with their combined force, disrupting her muscles and sending shooting pain through her body. Thirty-two finger jabs connected while Sakura was in the air, cutting off her voluntary muscles from her brain entirely, allowing sixty-four strikes, each in a carefully memorized place, to temporarily shut off her ability to manipulate chakra at all. A prisoner in her own body, she could only watch helplessly as Hinata caught and supported her limp opponent in one hand, as Raido shook off his shock at Sakura's ability and the abrupt turn-around long enough to declare Hyuga Hinata the winner of the eighty-first Chunin exams. Silence swept around the stadium as audibly as any noise, until it was broken by an anguished cry, despair given voice through broken glass.

A massive wave of sand swept through the section of the stands reserved for visitors from Sunagakure, indiscriminately bulling over and crushing those within, as Gaara of the desert screamed. "You killed her!" Grimy, brown tears flowed from his eyes, picking up sand on their way down his face, "You killed Sakura! You mu**st feed mother!**" As he spoke, his deep voice became backed with a high-pitched, screechy tone, as though two people were speaking at once, and he leaped down into the arena, sweeping one hand forward, toward Hinata. The sand responded, rushing forward in a wave, to sweep, to crush, to tear.

"Well, crap," Up in the Hokage's private box, one of the Kazekage's (the leader of Sunagakure) bodyguards shook his head, as the Kage himself and the other bodyguard slumped, suddenly devoid of animation. "This is less than ideal. Even with the contingency plan…"

"You are not the Kazekage," the Hokage observed, "Who are you really? What is the meaning of- No, I have no time for you. Your genin must not be allowed to rampage through my village. I will deal with you later."

"I'm afraid you'll have to make time," the bodyguard insisted, doffing his concealing turban to reveal short, red hair over an ageless face. "You see, we're invading Konoha today, and I am Sasori of the Red Sand, jonin of Suna." The false Kazekage and bodyguard lurched to their feet, blades sprouting from every inch of their bodies. "Unless you want to leave me free behind your walls, you'll need to fight me instead. In the mean-time, Gaara, the jinchuriki of Shukaku, will… entertain those around us in his own way. I hope, for your sake, there's nothing important around. But, as you well know, jinchuriki may be destructive, but Gaara is blindly so. Leave me be, and your beloved village will never survive. After all, Konoha isn't exactly teeming with S-ranked ninja right now. We both know no one else here can stop me, and your people can at least slow Gaara down, by dying at his feet."

Meanwhile, down on the arena floor, Hinata had just barely managed to avoid the swirling claw of sand that tried to encircle her. As Naruto and Kakashi joined her, followed an instant later by a more hesitant Sasuke, the Suna genin clutched Sakura's limp form to himself briefly, too far gone in murderous rage to check for vital signs. He slowly raised his head, revealing that his usually pale green eyes had gained an inhuman color, with pitch-black 'whites', pale gold irises, and pupils in the shape of four-pointed stars. The sand swept around his hunched form, hovering protectively about the slight figures in the eye of the storm.

Before any of the genin (or Kakashi) could react further, a massive concussive wave swept through the stadium, as a large section of Konoha's protective outer wall was penetrated by the invading forces from Suna. A glance up to the Kage box revealed the Hokage and his ANBU bodyguards surrounded by a small army of puppets. There would be no help from that quarter. But, Kakashi knew that the biggest threat, for the moment, was from Gaara.

"Sasuke, Naruto, Hinata, listen up," the jonin's commanding tone held their attention, "The village is under attack, probably by Suna's forces. You're staying here with me. We need to stop that boy, at all costs."

"Is he really that important?" Sasuke asked, "He's just a genin. How tough could he be?"

"He can control sand," Kakashi explained, "That's one of the special abilities of the jinchuriki of Shukaku, the sand wraith. If we were in a desert, he'd have practically unlimited power, so we're lucky in that respect, but he'll still be formidable. The fact that Gaara controls the ability suggests that he is on significantly better terms with his prisoner than Naruto, so we have to expect the worst-case scenario. Gaara might be able to temporarily unleash Shukaku on the village. The nearest buildings to the arena are mostly residential. Civilians. If he goes on a rampage before the noncombatants can evacuate… Even if all we can do is slow him down, every second will save lives." The jonin reached into his pouch with one hand, retrieving three round, red pills as he revealed his sharingan with the other. "These are called soldier pills. They have a variety of effects, depending on too many factors to explain now, but for you three, they'll refill your reserves. Just, don't take them more than once a month. Some of the ingredients are mildly toxic in larger amounts. These are usually restricted to Chunin or above for this reason. Now, we just need find a way to stop a delusional jinchuriki from destroying most of the village, and somehow rescue Sakura from him along the way."

"Hn. Some of the old clan scrolls mention that the sharingan can suppress and control the nine greater demons," Sasuke remembered, "Do you know how to do that, sensei?"

"Well, I was actually hoping you did," Kakashi admitted, "The Uchiha didn't exactly share their deepest secrets with outsiders."

"I think father would have told me when I awakened my sharingan," Sasuke replied, "but he never got the chance."

"Why didn't the pervy sage cover chakra suppressing seals yet?" Naruto lamented, "Lazy bastard said he'd teach me next week! That would be really useful right about now dattebayo!"

"I think I might be able to knock him out if you three draw off his sand," Kakashi analyzed, running an experienced eye over Gaara's defenses, "By the look of it, that sand will defend him even if he's not consciously directing it, but I can get around it if he's distracted. The trick is, if you kill a jinchuriki while he's drawing on the demon, it might escape. No matter how bad this gets, Shukaku inside the seal is infinitely better than Shukaku free. If nothing else, the host will run out of chakra eventually. However, we're lucky in one respect. Lord Jiraiya thought that we could have a problem with an unstable jinchuriki running around, so he gave me a special sealing tag. All I have to do is touch it to his skin, and it should knock him out for a few hours." Left unsaid was that Jiraiya had given Kakashi the seal so that if the nine-tailed fox tried to take Naruto over during training, it could be contained. Still, Kakashi figured that if the seal worked on one jinchuriki, it would probably work about as well on another.

"I-I could try to use the Eight Trigrams Sixty-four Palms on him," Hinata offered, "If he can't use chakra, he won't be a threat, right?"

"Good idea, but it won't work," Kakashi explained, "Gentle fist doesn't work very well on jinchuriki, especially one that can access the demon's power. The demonic chakra makes them regenerate, and it interferes with the gentle fist's internal effects. Here he comes. Spread out, and try to make him overextend."

Sure enough, it seemed Gaara had had enough of mourning his 'dead' love. He raised a hand, directing a wave of golden-brown sand toward the Konoha team, who scattered before it. Sasuke, having gotten into the habit of drawing fire from more powerful foes, counterattacked first with a brilliant fireball that did absolutely nothing to Gaara's defenses but elicited a scream of rage and a barrage of sand projectiles, each the size of a deck of cards. Individually, the sand bullets weren't especially dangerous, but in the hundreds they were devastating. Without the full use of his eyes, the Uchiha was forced into a desperate evasive sprint, and took more hits than he would have liked.

Hinata attacked second, with her chakra-conserving water needles that also failed to penetrate the sand. However, she was leery of using a more powerful jutsu for two reasons. Hinata suspected that the battle would be a long one, and didn't want to get close to the sand. The needles were both efficient and effective. Also, she remembered a trip to the beach when she was much younger, and her parents were on leave. Specifically, she remembered how she could only get a sand castle to stand up if she built with hard-packed, wet, heavy sand. If Gaara's sand got too wet, it would become an even better weapon and defense. Perhaps remembering what Hinata had done to Sakura, Gaara committed another wave of sand to try to engulf the Hyuga, which she only survived thanks to the Heavenly Rotation.

Frustrated with the lack of results, Gaara attempted to attack Hinata again, but was forced on the defensive as Naruto, and several doppelgangers, sent a hail of kunai knives into his sand barriers. Each knife, much to Gaara's dismay, had two exploding tags wrapped around the hilt for extra punch. There was a very, very loud bang, albeit a quieter one than Suna's main forces breaching Konoha's outer wall. Gaara's bulwarks of sand, already temporarily weakened by the quarter ton of sand he had sent after Hinata and Sasuke, dispersed across the arena in a gritty cloud. They would doubtlessly reform in seconds, but in that time the foreign ninja was vulnerable. Kakashi, a highly skilled jonin, only needed a few seconds anyway.

One second, Kakashi was standing behind his students, looking for an opening. The next, moving too quickly for the genin to track, he was behind Gaara. The jonin was still moving slowly enough that Gaara's automatic sand defenses would have intercepted his attack, if just barely. However, those defenses had been taxed beyond their limits by the equivalent of a few tons of TNT. With a swift movement, Kakashi slapped the demon-suppressing seal on the back of Gaara's exposed neck, and stepped back in triumph. It was over.

The seal slipped off Gaara's neck without activating and wafted gently to the ground. A bit of returning sand shredded it. More sand proceeded to engulf Gaara's right arm and twisted, creating a massive, warped paw of sand, shot through with black, pulsing veins and haphazardly sprouting, curved claws. Before the startled jonin could pull himself together, Gaara struck out with his new appendage, far faster than he had moved before, and casually slapped Kakashi across the arena. The jonin, caught off-guard, was forced to accept the blow with a bone-shattering crack, leaving the floor until the arena wall ended his brief flight.

"Oh, no!" Hinata, her byakugan active, looked from Gaara to Kakashi in abrupt comprehension, reacting to something only she could see.

"What is it?" Sasuke's voice rang flat and toneless, as he tried to avoid showing fear. After that night, this was nothing. He was not afraid of some stupid ninja beach bum! Ok, maybe a little shaken at this point… "What do you see?"

"I-I didn't r-recognize it before," Hinata explained haltingly, "I've n-never seen anything like it. His sand… He's forced so much chakra into it that it glows under the byakugan. I though he glowed too because he has t-tons of chakra. B-but, that isn't it. He's wrapped himself in sand. Like a-armor. That's why he didn't try to d-dodge when Kakashi got his back. There's an extra layer of protection. Even if we get through the sand he's controlling, th-the sand armor will stop our attacks."

While the Konoha genin were talking, Kakashi staggered out of his hole in the wall, right wrist hanging broken. He took an experimental step, and staggered to his knees, barely lowering his mask before he coughed up blood. Forget fighting, the jonin could barely breathe, let alone move. At this point he knew, from long experience with severe wounds, that no amount of willpower was going to get him back into the fight, not without some serious medical jutsu to back it up. The genin were on their own.

Having dealt with Kakashi to his satisfaction, the semi-possessed Gaara turned his attention to his original target, Hinata. Letting out a vicious snarl, he dashed forward, trusting his enhanced speed and heavy defenses to deal with any counterattack, and thrust his claw toward her. Naruto, never one to let his friends get hurt, tried to cut off the sand limb before it reached Hinata with a wind-enhanced sword, but the sand flowed around the supernaturally sharp blade, trapping it without being cut, and pulled it out of Naruto's hands. Sasuke sent a stream of fire at Gaara, but the unstable jinchuriki ignored the attack as it licked uselessly at the sand shield. With a cry of triumph, he swept his claw around the girl and lifted her off the ground, struggling helplessly against his demonic grasp. Grinning viciously, he prepared to squeeze the life from her soft, weak body, to let the beautiful, warm, delicious blood flow. Mother would be so pleased! And when mother was pleased, the whispers weren't so loud.

However, Gaara paused for a moment, to instead gape at the sky. And why not? Everyone else in the arena was doing the same thing. Because a shifting, dense, white mass of something none of them could identify was flying overhead, so large and thick as to block out the sun. The mass descended toward the stadium, resolving as it drew closer into a teeming flock of dangerously sharp objects. It circled the stands with rustling, whistling, pointed grace, before passing over Gaara's head. Three objects detached themselves from the swarm and knifed into the jinchuriki's arm, identifiable while stationary as impossibly durable paper airplanes, which then proceeded to explode and blow off Gaara's more dangerous limb, freeing Hinata. Everyone in the area, except for Gaara, immediately checked for a genjutsu that was not there. The flock of paper airplanes and flying, origami animals, meanwhile, swirled around between the genin from Konoha and their opponent. The sheets of paper began to unfold themselves, and clump together, until they formed most of the body of Konan, the jonin from Amegakure. Although her arms, head, and torso were recognizable, the bottom of her form tapered off into a roughly arranged fringe of white paper, and occasionally a sheet or three would peel off her body, leaving a blank, white patch, or a few sheets would land on her, seamlessly blending into her flesh or clothes. The rest of the paper circled her lazily, if not for its' purposeful orbits seeming to float aimlessly on the wind.

"Run," She ordered the genin, "Get your sensei and flee. The jinchuriki cannot hurt me while my jutsu is active, but I lack the firepower to defeat him. I will not be able to protect you for long."

"Why are you even doing this?" Sasuke asked. After the massacre, he had trouble accepting that adults ever showed up in time to fight a monster. "What's in it for you?"

"S-sasuke… That's not very smart," Hinata pointed out, "You shouldn't antagonize the n-nice lady who just saved our lives."

"Well, I did not do it for you, Uchiha," Konan's voice sounded laden with strain, as she blocked a volley of sand shuriken with a wall of paper, "Lord Pain has decreed that he will converse with Uzumaki Naruto. If Naruto dies due to my inaction, I will have failed him. Entirely aside from my duty, it does not sit well with me to watch while children die."

"But you can't beat him," Naruto repeated, "Why not?"

"I couldn't just bring a giant stack of explosive tags into Konoha," Konan snapped, patience sapped as she concentrated on the battle, "The ANBU tends to frown on foreigners bearing high explosives. If I use too many in this battle, I will not have enough material left to reform my body afterwards. I did not carry this paper with me; every sheet is a part of my body."

"Then how about this dattebayo?" Pulling a scroll from his pocket, Naruto unsealed a solid block of explosive tags, almost a meter tall, and an even larger stack of blank tags for use later. "I mean, does it have to be body paper? Or can you use this stuff instead?"

Konan responded by sweeping the paper up into her vortex. "Ooh, these are some nice seals. This is at least chunin-level work. In this case, as a friend of mine would say, 'Stand back and watch this! Because sometimes art-'" The explosives slid under Gaara's outer defenses, blanketing his body in sizzling bombs. "'-Is an explosion!'" As soon as the tags went off, Konan sent another wave of seals sweeping in through the smoke cloud, which didn't explode. "However, personally, I prefer calligraphy." She finished smugly, as the dust settled to reveal Gaara mummified from head to toe in what had to be chakra-suppressing seals. Nothing else could have restrained him so easily. "Now that I've gift-wrapped Suna's jinchuriki, maybe I should mail him back to them. If that partial transformation is any indication, he's clearly defective merchandise." The three genin stared at her in awe. She was making jokes at a time like this?! Sasuke thought she was acting stupid; Hinata and Naruto were now convinced Konan was the coolest person they had ever met. Kakashi suspected that she was trying to put the genin at ease, and take their minds off how they'd almost died.

"Alright, enough standing around," The rain jonin admonished them, "We need to get Kakashi to the hospital. Coughing up blood is never a good sign." Without waiting for a response, she gathered up Gaara, Kakashi, and Sakura, the latter two on makeshift stretchers of blank paper, and swooped for the skies. Unwilling to abandon their comrades, especially in a war zone, the conscious genin followed somewhat more slowly. While in her paper form, Konan could fly, giving her a significant advantage in speed.

Meanwhile, up in the Kage box, the fifth Hokage was having troubles of his own. Sasori, true to both his boasts and his dossier, was in fact extremely skilled. Since almost the beginning of the fight, the Suna jonin had never fielded less than eight puppets at a time, all of which bristled with weapons and moved at speeds most jonin would be hard-pressed to match. The Hokage's ANBU guards had kept up for a time, but beings of flesh and blood tired far before lifeless constructs of… whatever that strange metal was. Whatever it was, the finest steel blades were no match for it, and most elemental jutsu and physical techniques did very little damage. In fact, the only things that had actually permanently defeated one of the puppets were being buried with earth-style, or sliced apart by the Hokage's high-level wind techniques.

Yet, for every marionette that fell, another took its place, and Danzo suspected that each wind jutsu, which may or may not hit its target, taxed him far more than unleashing another puppet cost Sasori. The puppet-master had yet to reveal himself, apparently determined to make this a battle of attrition. While each puppet was individually weak compared to the Hokage, eight of them together were almost his equal. And Danzo was no longer a young man. Although the leader, or Kage, of a major village like Konoha must be personally powerful, there is more to the post than that. Might Gai and Jiraiya were certainly better in a fight than Shimura Danzo. The position of Hokage is always given to the S-ranked ninja in the village with the greatest gifts for leadership and administration. Danzo definitely still qualified for his S-rank, but chakra can only do so much to compensate for the drain of age. The Hokage was extraordinarily fit and capable… for a man in his early seventies. The simple fact of the matter was that Sasori was thirty years younger than his opponent, and using a less draining technique too. To top it all off, the way several of the Hokage's bodyguards had dropped without a disabling wound suggested that at least some of the puppet-master's weapons were poisoned. All in all, not a great situation to be in.

Fortunately for Danzo, reinforcements were on their way. As Konan swept her charges away to the hospital, and the sounds of battle near the walls began to quiet down, the puppets abruptly withdrew, allowing the exhausted older man to sink to his knees in relief. While he would need to go and assist against the invaders soon, he really needed a few moments to catch his breath first.

As the Hokage levered himself to his feet with a groan, a rather battered Jiraiya ran up the side of the building, bowed briefly in respect, and gave a brief report. "Jonin-commander Nara Shikaku reports that the invading forces are pulling back, sir," The toad sage paused to bandage a bleeding wound on his wrist, using his teeth to pull the wrapping snug, "The real Kazekage led an elite force against the walls, hoping to trap our troops between them and Sasori or the jinchuriki of Shukaku. However, our ally from Amegakure defeated the enemy jinchuriki, jonin Might Gai stalled the Kazekage while our forces dealt with his men, and I just convinced Sasori to live to fight another day. So, unless we get any other unpleasant surprises, I think the worst is over."

"Who gave you those wounds?" Danzo questioned gravely, sweeping his eye over the sage's tattered, blood-stained clothes.

"Uh, Sasori got me a few times with his puppets, and he rigged his own body with a booby trap full of pointy bits. Creepy bastard. Still, I got him better than he got me," Jiraiya answered with a cocky grin.

"I doubt that very much. Sasori poisons his blades," the Hokage replied with concern, "We need to get you to the hospital immediately."

"Well, shit," Jiraiya summed up his feelings with a single word. There wasn't really anything else to say.


	9. Family Reunion!

After a few days of helping to repair the damage left by the retreating invaders from Sunagakure, Team Seven was called to the Konoha military hospital. According to the messenger, Jiraiya needed to speak with them regarding a mission, and it was urgent. None of the three genin were sure what the older ninja wanted; while all of them had unique skills, they didn't have anything yet that someone else in Konoha couldn't do better. However, orders are orders, and Team Seven assembled around the loyal Sannin's hospital bed to hear what their next mission was to be.

"Hey, kids! Good to see you," Jiraiya boomed, his upbeat tone at odds with his appearance. The master ninja was pale and drawn, like he was very sick, although he moved with his usual vigor. "I've got a special mission for you three, and before you ask, I requested you specifically. To put it bluntly, I'm dying. That Sasori got me with a poisoned weapon. I've slowed the effects with a seal, but the doctors think I've got a month left unless we can get an antidote. Suna has a cure, but it takes two months to brew, and according to them they don't have any on hand. As far as we can tell, they aren't lying. Konan is on her way back home, to see if Ame has an antidote, but there're no guarantees there."

"Then what do you need us for?" Sakura asked, screwing up her brows as she turned the issue over, "We won't be able to cure an exotic poison."

"No, you won't," The Sannin confirmed. "The only person who might be able to discover a cure in time is my old teammate, Tsunade. She's unquestionably the best doctor and field medic alive. And if she can't save me, well, in my opinion Tsunade is the most beautiful woman in the world, and a good friend too. I'd like to see her one last time if I can. But, she's not currently in the village, and we don't know her current whereabouts. Since she's just as skilled as I am, finding her will be difficult, to say the least. Well, it'll be easy to know where she's been, but not where she is, if you know what I mean. Like me, she's got a bit of a reputation."

"Why isn't she in the village?" Sasuke wondered, "Tsunade isn't a missing-nin, but I don't think she's returned to Konoha for as long as I can remember."

"She's on leave," Jiraiya explained, "The standard procedure for medics working the hospital is two days on, five days off. If your surgeon isn't at their best… We make sure they get lots of vacation, even in wartime. Tsunade, though, she could save lives no one else could. During the Second and Third Great Wars, she spent almost all her time at the hospital, working over-time to save lives. Even during peace-time, she worked more often than not. After her fiancé died a few years before Naruto here was born, she requested some time off. Imagine our surprise when we found she had nearly eighteen years of vacation built up. Technically, Tsunade has another two years of paid leave before she has to show up. Which means we've got to go out and find her."

"But then why us?" Sasuke cut to the heart of the matter, "None of us have tracking skills."

"Well, there's no guarantee that we'll find my old teammate in time, or that she'll be able to fix me up," the Sannin ran a palm over his face, "If I… Well, you know… I want to make sure my skills and knowledge aren't lost forever if I kick the bucket without passing anything on. I've already contacted the toad summon clans. The leaders of the ninja toads don't think any of you are ready for the summon contract yet, but when the time comes to pick a new summoner, I made sure that the three of you are at least on the list. While we travel, I'll be teaching you three as much as I can. Since no one in the village matches my skills exactly, I can't take on an apprentice or something, but… Naruto has a gift for seals, and as one of the last seal masters it's my job to make sure my work isn't lost. Sakura's got the skills for my earth-style techniques, and a few of my special jutsu. Sasuke can learn my fire jutsu, and he's already started learning my Gamaken-style taijutsu. Between the three of you, if worst comes to worst, I can at least rest easy knowing that my life's work will carry on. Also, I have some information that I think the three of you will be pretty interested in. I was going to tell you soon either way, though, so this doesn't really change things. But not here. I'll wait until we're well away from the village. Wouldn't want someone listening in. So go get packed, and meet me by the main gate in, say, two hours. Pack for a little over a month, and pack light. We're going to be staying in towns for the most part; Tsunade isn't one to rough it if she doesn't have to."

Excited and intrigued, the genin wasted little time in packing their bags and reaching the gate early, and were rewarded for the effort when Jiraiya showed up half an hour ahead of time. The four ninja covered ground quickly at first, until Konoha was out of sight, passing the time by finally convincing Naruto of Jiraiya's credentials. Once the toad sage figured they were far enough from the village, the party slowed down so they could train while they walked.

"What I am about to teach you is both the most difficult thing I am expecting you to learn, and the easiest to practice," The sannin explained, "You can train even when you're doing other things, good thing too, because this is a high level, A-ranked ninjutsu. It was one of the Fourth Hokage's inventions, a technique that struck fear into the hearts of ninja around the world."

"You know the Fourth Lord's teleportation jutsu?!" Squealed Sakura, "And you're going to teach it to us?! This isn't a joke?"

"Uh, no, not that one," Jiraiya chuckled, "I don't know much about the Hairaishin, other than it used a seal he put on his kunai. He wouldn't tell anyone how it worked, not even me, and I led his genin team! Not too many people know this nowadays, but the Fourth Hokage created two unique ninjutsu, one of which I know because I helped him develop it. The jutsu's name is Rasengan, and outside of a kekkei genkai or demonic chakra it is the strongest offensive technique ever created." He pulled four water balloons from his pocket and handed one to each of the somewhat star-struck genin, keeping the fourth for himself. "The rasengan has three stages. Once you master all three, you will be able to perform the jutsu. Until you master all three, you should consider the technique forbidden. An incomplete rasengan won't do much damage to your enemies, and it could give them enough information to replicate the jutsu, which we most certainly don't want. Now, the first stage is rotation. In order to master this stage, you need to pop the balloon by swirling around the water inside with untyped chakra only. Do not use your other hand; do not use water style. Like so." The sannin demonstrated, the water balloon bulging at several points simultaneously before bursting all over his hand. "While you're working on that, I'll tell you how to perform some of my easier techniques; lots of stuff, once you know how to do it you can practice on your own time."

The team travelled until dark, while Jiraiya drilled his pupils with the unique insights into the nature and use of chakra he had picked up over decades of experience. However, once they set up camp, he moved on to the juicy secrets he had promised the three once they had some privacy.

"Sakura," He began, "What I've got for you is the simplest, so I'll say it first. Before she left, Tsunade told me a bit about the old Senju clan compound. Since she's the last of the clan, she wanted to make sure someone knew this stuff in case she didn't make it back. She said that there's a room in the back of the clan head's house that will only open to someone with wood style. Tenzo tried to open it, but he didn't have enough chakra to keep it open for long enough to go in. Once you surpass him, you should be able to access the First Hokage's personal jutsu library, where he wrote down the mechanics of wood style for the next person who could get in."

"I know Tenzo tries, but he's had to invent all of his jutsu," Sakura thought out loud, "With the First Lord's notes… Wow. I can't wait to see what's in there. Pity I'm probably gonna have to wait a while."

"Alright, Sasuke, you might want to sit down first," Jiraiya turned to the Uchiha, "Trust me on this one." Once the bemused boy had taken a seat, the Sannin continued. "I'm not one-hundred percent certain, but it is possible that you aren't the only survivor of the massacre."

"What? Someone else got out alive?!" Sasuke's sharingan reflexively activated as he got up in the sannin's face, suddenly filled with hope he'd dared not entertain in years. "Who? Where are they? Answer me, damn it!"

"I don't have specifics," Jiraiya explained, "but, after the massacre, when ANBU identified the bodies, they came up short about thirty civilians. The border guards also noticed some tracks, about the same number of people as the missing bodies, headed north, toward the land of Rain or the land of Grass. Pursuit teams were unable to catch up before they crossed the border, though. It's all circumstantial evidence, but it's pretty strong. Somewhere in grass or rain, or maybe they made it as far as the land of Lightning, you might have some family still alive. But if they are alive, they've done their best to disappear, presumably so Itachi can't find them. They won't be easy to locate."

"I- Alive. I-" Sasuke couldn't find the words, "Thank you. I- I don't care how hard it is to find them. I need to try." He wandered toward the far side of the campsite, muttering. The only comprehensible words were something about 'alone' and 'think'.

"Naruto, you better sit too," Jiraiya told the jinchuriki, "This is just as big as what I told Sasuke. Bigger, even, for you. I know who your parents are."

"You do? That's great dattebayo!" Naruto grinned, "But, why didn't you tell me sooner? And how come no one else knows?"

"The higher-ups agreed to keep it secret to protect you," the sannin related, "It was hard enough to keep the other villages from kidnapping you for being the jinchuriki. If they'd known who your parents are, they would've sent assassins instead."

"Then who were they?" Naruto asked, "They must've been pretty important. Hey, am I like a prince or something dattebayo?"

"Almost, but not quite," the sannin replied, "You'll be happy to hear that your parents didn't abandon you. But, they are both dead. Your father's name was Namikaze Minato, also known as the Yellow Flash, the Fourth Hokage of Konoha." Naruto and Jiraiya said the last phrase together, the former in a squeaky whisper. "The rasengan is one of your heirlooms, but I figured you wouldn't mind if I shared it with your friends." When Naruto confirmed this, the sannin continued, "Your mother's name was Uzumaki Kushina, one of few survivors of the village hidden in the eddies, Uzushiogakure. We decided to give you her maiden name, so that the assassins wouldn't connect you to the Fourth Hokage. She was also the previous jinchuriki of the nine-tailed demon fox. Being a demon vessel runs in your family, so to speak, because the Uzumaki tend to be highly resistant to the negative effects of demonic chakra."

"Kushina," Naruto breathed, trying to burn the name into his memory, "How- How did- What happened to them?"

"Minato died fighting the nine-tailed fox. A jinchuriki's seal is weakest at childbirth, and the fox escaped while you were being born. I don't know how, since Minato and I triple-checked the seal beforehand," Jiraiya laid a comforting arm across Naruto's back. "But it wasn't your fault. We did everything humanly possible to keep the fox from getting out, and even though it did, Kushina was Uzumaki, so we were lucky in that regard. The other reason Uzumaki are used as jinchuriki is because most people die if their prisoner is extracted to be sealed in someone else, but Uzumaki don't. It's a very specific but useful kekkei genkai. While Kushina recovered with me, Minato, the Third Hokage, and Orochimaru, who was still loyal at the time, engaged the demon to keep it out of the village and seal it in you. The Third Lord, my old mentor, sacrificed his life to weaken the monster enough for Minato to seal it, but before the seal was complete the fox clobbered Orochimaru and tried to kill you to disrupt the sealing jutsu. Orochimaru still managed to block most of the attack, but some of it got through, and Minato ended up shielding you with his own body as he completed the seal. He truly was the greatest hero the village ever had. He protected his family and village up until the very end."

"But, everybody said both my parents died when the fox attacked," Naruto puzzled, "You said my mother survived. What happened to her?"

"Well, you know that Orochimaru defected after he got caught experimenting on civilians, right? You were about two, so you wouldn't remember anything from then," Jiraiya asked. Upon receiving a nod, he continued the story. "Well, when my old teammate left the village, he decided to kidnap your mom and take her with him so he could experiment on an Uzumaki. She disagreed, to the order of several million ryo in property damage and took off his right arm, although he seems to have fixed that. You may not know this, but Orochimaru and your father were both candidates to succeed the Third Hokage. After Minato was chosen, the two kept in contact; they traded advice pretty regularly. Their relationship was kind of like what you have with Sasuke, but more civil. I think Minato only sacrificed himself because he felt like he could trust the snake to watch over you instead. Hell, Minato made Orochimaru your godfather. My student said he didn't think he could rely on me to stick around. Ironic in retrospect, but he was probably right about me. Orochimaru betrayed and murdered your mother, and he got away. If I die to this poison, I think my only regret will be that I didn't take that snake with me."

"He- Orochimaru-" Naruto took a few minutes to put the new information together, face cycling through a myriad of emotions, "He's the reason my family is all dead. He's the reason I've been alone. They trusted him, and he- I'm gonna get stronger, and then I'm gonna kill him."

"Well, the good sensei is supposed to tell you not to do that," the toad sage admonished, "When you kill someone, for any reason, their loved ones will want you dead, and they'll try to take revenge. Whether they succeed or not, they'll get your friends and allies in on it in your defense. Assuming both sides have strong friends, you can embroil an entire nation in war that way. Usually, it's best to forgive. Hatred begets nothing but hatred."

"So you're telling me not to kill him?" Naruto asked, "But you just said you wanted to. How does that work?"

"Well, in Orochimaru's case, the only person who actually likes that slimeball is his creepy apprentice, and Fu, apparently," Jiraiya explained, "So in this case, considering all the lives he's ruined, killing the snake is more like a public service than anything. Just don't get into the habit of revenge. It rarely ends well."

Naruto could agree with that. After all, if someone hurt Sakura or Sasuke, he and Kakashi-sensei would try to hurt them right back. If that someone had friends, things could really get bad fast. "I understand, Jiraiya-sensei," he agreed, "Just Orochimaru, and then I'm done. But if Sasuke asks for help with his brother, I'm gonna give it dattebayo. I don't want Sasuke to die, and everybody knows Itachi is really, really strong."

"I guess I can't fault you for wanting to help your friends," the sannin acknowledged, "You better get some rest, kiddo. You've had some big news, and we've got a long day ahead of us."

Over the next two weeks, the team swept the cities and towns around the land of fire for any mention of Senju Tsunade. While the slug sage was skilled, she was not exactly known for keeping a low profile. In fact, she was downright obvious, if one knew what to look for, and Jiraiya eventually picked up her trail. Tsunade, for all her virtues, had an unfortunate weakness for gambling. However, she possessed neither a great deal of luck nor skill, and was thus easy to track by following the swathe of happy winners she left in her wake. On the plus side, this gave Jiraiya plenty of time to train his charges.

Naruto had always been motivated to become a better ninja, but knowing that Orochimaru was directly responsible for the death of his mother kept the blonde genin constantly working to improve himself. He was going to make sure that the snake never had the chance to hurt another family, ever again! Naruto threw himself into his studies as he never had before, and was rewarded when Jiraiya decided his pupil was ready for the notes Kushina had brought with her when she immigrated. One of the reasons the destruction of Uzushiogakure was such a tragedy was that the village was the residence of most of the sealing masters in the world. With so many of them dead, sealing became a dying art. Kushina's notes on Uzumaki clan sealing contained insights into seals discovered by the clan over the years, but also in the methods used to create new formulas entirely. Thrilled to find something he was really good at, and eager to become stronger, Naruto improved rapidly, mastering several of the formulas from the secrets of his clan despite his limited time studying them.

Sasuke, meanwhile, felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He might not be the last of the Uchiha after all. His family could still be alive! Itachi still had to die of course, but even if they never met, the very thought that he was no longer alone left Sasuke feeling… happy (Possibly? He thought this might be what it felt like, but it had been a while…) for the first time in four years. For the first time since the massacre, he had something to live for beyond vengeance, and it felt… good. This didn't mean he was going to slack off, though. Sasuke memorized a dozen fire jutsu, most of which were currently beyond his skills. He also began feeling out the basics of jutsu creation, to make an entirely new technique from scratch. According to Kakashi, making a new technique was the mark of a true master of ninjutsu. He also completed the first stage of rasengan training, which neither teammate had managed. Sakura couldn't muster enough force to pop the balloon, and Naruto didn't have the fine control yet to spin the water in different directions, a necessary step. However, Sasuke got to move on to the next step, popping a rubber racquetball, which required a lot more power. After trying for a few days, the Uchiha could see why the rasengan was an A-ranked jutsu. This was not easy, not that he was giving up.

Sakura put extra effort into her physical conditioning, determined to increase her chakra reserves and unlock the secrets of the First Hokage. Progress was slow, but it was constant, and she distracted herself from the disappointing rate by practicing one of Jiraiya's special secret techniques. The toad sage had invented a jutsu that allowed him to manipulate his long hair as a weapon or a fifth appendage, a jutsu that required more fine control than either boy had. Sakura, though, was highly overqualified, and loved the idea that she could have long hair without it being impractical (take that, Ino!).

However, the relatively idyllic routine of training and travel was broken up, when the team searched the largest casino in the city of Tanzaku, a place well-known for high-stakes poker and fine sake. The genin furtively compared the person they were watching with the photograph Jiraiya had given them. There were a few differences, but they knew Tsunade liked to hide her age behind the art of Transformation. Blonde hair, and a purple diamond mark on the forehead? Check. An extremely… ample bosom? ("Holy crap, her boobs are the size of her head!" Naruto observed, receiving synchronized clouts from his teammates). Sketchy person in an Akatsuki-patterned cloak and straw hat leaning in the corner, eating dango, and watching everyone? Oh, crap.

Fortunately, the genin seemed to have somehow escaped the elite criminal's attention (anyone who belonged to the same organization as Orochimaru was automatically evil and highly competent by association, as far as the genin were concerned). After fading back into the crowd, Naruto left three doppelgangers, two of them using the art of transformation to pretend to be his teammates, and the real genin went to find Jiraiya as soon as possible. With the clones, hopefully no one would notice that the young ninja had left. They found the toad sage just outside the door, flirting with the receptionist, and Sakura concisely explained the situation inside. However, Jiraiya wasn't too worried. After all, "Based on what he said when you met, Orochimaru was acting on his own when he attacked you, rather than as a member of Akatsuki. Whoever this person is, he or she probably isn't going to be interested in us unless we make a scene, so keep things low-key and stay close, and we ought to be fine."

Not without reservations, the genin followed Jiraiya back into the casino, careful to follow his advice, at least until the toad sage disregarded it completely. "Hey, Tsunade!" he greeted loudly, "Fancy running into you here!"

"Jiraiya. I suppose this is just a spontaneous and utterly convenient coincidence?" She twisted around to look at him without leaving her seat, "What do the old farts back home want this- Oh, wow. You look awful. What the hell happened to you?"

"You've probably heard about the invasion by now." Jiraiya explained, "I got tagged with a poisoned blade during the fighting. I was hoping you could help me. And whether you can or not, the hospital's overloaded with the wounded. Even if you only come back for a few weeks, it would really help."

"Huh. I'll take a look at you, for old time's sake if nothing else," Tsunade replied, "After what we've been through together it's the least I can do. But I've seen a lot of Konoha's dirty little secrets out here; I'm not sure I want to go back at this point." She glared at the meagre pile of chips in front of her. "Not even worth cashing out, so we can head out right now. Just let me collect my travelling companions, willing and otherwise." The doctor stood and stretched, which did highly… interesting things to her chest, and took a haori off the back of her chair. A black haori, decorated with a scattering of red clouds. "Shizune, Idiot-Child!" She addressed the man lurking in the corner and a cheerful brunette carrying a pet pig standing near him, "We're heading out!"

"I resent that remark," muttered the man.

"More like you resemble that remark," Tsunade snorted, "You want to earn a better moniker, you ought to take better care of yourself. The only reason I'm working with you is because fearless leader thinks you'll commit suicide via neglected terminal illness if you step outside without a full-time medic. Have you done anything, anything at all to disprove his theory?"

"Hn," he grunted, not deigning to respond verbally.

"And here's the other half of the nickname," she lectured him, "Is that a 'yes' grunt? An 'I'm hungry' grunt? An 'I am in excruciating pain' grunt? Use your words!"

"Hn," he informed her.

"Must not punch the sick man through a wall; must not punch the sick man through a wall," she recited to herself with the ease of many repetitions, "Don't want to have to put him back together afterword. He's not worth it. If I kill him, that's far too much work wasted."

"Hn," he adjusted his hat, body language screaming smugness, as Tsunade turned a distinctive shade of red, vibrating with suppressed irritation.

"You do realize you just earned a complete physical?" the medic asked in a saccharine tone. "Just as soon as I can find The Glove, anyway." The man flinched away from her at the thought, into the path of a passing dealer. The casino employee mostly missed the cloaked man, but knocked the straw hat from his head. Without the covering, the man… looked a lot like Sasuke. They had the same black hair and eyes, and the same facial structure, although the man wore his hair longer, tied back in a ponytail. The man also had a pair of deep stress lines running down his face, and he looked older than Sasuke, maybe in his late teens. Jiraiya immediately dropped into a defensive stance between his charges and the Akatsuki members, but Sasuke refused to cooperate and stay in relative safety.

"Itachi!" the younger Uchiha screamed, uncooperative, breaking voice taking his roar of righteous fury up a few humiliating octaves. The older man looked at Sasuke, squinted at him, looked again.

"Do I know you, ma'am?" he finally asked, after several moments of extended silence. You could have heard a pin drop. It probably helped that the other casino patrons had noticed the potential ninja battle and made themselves scarce.

"You- You don't recognize me?!" Sasuke shouted, almost unable to process what he had just heard. "After what you did to me? Wait, you think- I am not a girl!" On the last sentence, his voice broke again, which probably didn't help his case.

"Itachi, you idiot," Tsunade slapped a palm against her forehead, "Put them on."

"No," the older Uchiha disagreed, "They make me look stupid."

"Put them on, or the next time you have major surgery, you get to do it without anesthetic," the doctor offered, "And won't that be fun. For me."

"Hn," he grunted noncommittally. But, he did reach into his cloak and draw out a pair of wire-framed bifocals. He slipped them over his eyes, grumbling about the loss of his 'look', and did a double take. "Sasuke?! Wow, you have a girly voice. I almost didn't recognize you. Sorry, I misspoke. I can totally tell you aren't a girl." He didn't go to much trouble to be convincing…

"Die, you monster!" Enraged beyond caution, Sasuke charged his brother, sharingan blazing. The genin attempted a powerful swing ("The point goes first!" Hayate Gekko muttered somewhere in Konoha. He wasn't sure why he felt like saying it right then, but he shrugged it off. It was generally good advice; a few inches of point does as much damage as a few feet of slashing.), but Itachi smoothly sidestepped, deflecting the blow with one hand. His other hand snaked up and around Sasuke's guard, allowing Itachi to… poke Sasuke in the forehead. Startled and off balance, the genin hit the ground, his brother looming over him.

"Sorry, Sasuke," Itachi said, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, "But you'll have to do better than that." Sasuke responded by trying to slice Itachi's ankles, but the missing-nin easily hopped over the swipe. "Don't be so hasty," he chided the younger Uchiha, "We haven't seen each other in years. There's so much to catch up on! How did you do at the academy? Have you made any new friends? Have you started noticing girls yet?" Itachi's smile grew a little wider. "You have! I saw how that girl on your team looks at you. Oh, little brother, haven't you read the anti-fraternization regulations? No relationships with teammates! You could get arrested for that."

"We're just friends," Sasuke sputtered, momentarily forgetting who he was talking to. "It isn't like that! I have absolutely no desire to- With her- Augh! No way! Shut up!" However, Sasuke's barrage of fireballs and shuriken did nothing to dampen the subdued look of glee on Itachi's face.

"Wait, I get it," he exclaimed, "I just remembered! Mother and father never did give you 'the talk' before they died, did they? You don't know what to do! Well, don't worry. As your older brother, I will do my duty and rectify this oversight." Sasuke dropped his sword from nerveless hands, paling rapidly.

"I don't need it!" the genin argued, "I'll be fine, really. Please, Kami, no!"

"Foolish little brother," Itachi intoned, "Don't you understand? Kakashi won't help you; I knew him when I was in ANBU. There's no way. What other options do you have? Your choices are me, or… Jiraiya."

"I hate you," Sasuke informed his brother, "I hate you with every fiber of my being. I hope you die in the most horribly painful way possible, and I intend to see to it personally that you do."

"That isn't a no," the missing-nin pointed out.

"I'm still going to try to kill you afterwards," the younger Uchiha clarified. "J-just get it over with."

"Ok! Oh," Itachi turned to the other genin, "Actually, do either of you need to hear this?"

"I know this makes me the odd one out, but my parents are still alive," Sakura pointed out.

"Uh, Kiba's mom made me sit through it when she realized I live alone," Naruto jabbered at maximum verbal speed, "I don't need it, really!"

Itachi rubbed his hands together, turning back to Sasuke. "The first thing for you to know is that what you've been feeling is perfectly normal. Everyone, with the possible exception of Might Gai, has gone through a very similar experience…"

"Oh Kami, he's actually doing it," Jiraiya breathed, watching in astonishment. Naruto, Sakura, Tsunade, and Shizune, conflict completely forgotten, gaped right alongside the toad sage. "Did you know he was planning to do this?" the sage asked Tsunade.

"He isn't much for conversation, normally," Tsunade replied, "This is more complete sentences about something other than business or food than I've heard from him in three years."

"Is that really Uchiha Itachi?" Jiraiya persisted, still unable to accept what his eyes and ears were telling him.

"If he isn't, he's an unbelievably good actor," the doctor analyzed, "Best guess, it's him."

"Uh, this probably isn't the best time to say it," Jiraiya responded awkwardly, "But since you're working with a known mass-murdering traitor, I'm gonna have to bring you in."

"You're welcome to try," Tsunade snorted, "You're suffering from an exotic poison, and have three genin backing you up. I'm in good health, and even if Itachi's… busy, I still have Shizune. Think about it."

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you leave," the toad sage persisted.

"Excellent," Tsunade cracked each of her knuckles individually, "I have some Itachi-spawned frustration to work off. You're not him, but you're sturdy enough. You'll live. Probably." Jiraiya yelped like a preschooler. Tsunade flicked his forehead. The light blow blew him through the nearest wall. "Run, pervert, run!" she cackled, leaping after her hapless victim. "You know it'll be worse if I have to work to catch you!"

Naruto and Sakura looked from the hole to Itachi to Shizune. "Are- Are you going to do anything?" Sakura asked Shizune timidly.

"No, I think I'm good," the brunette replied, tickling her pig's belly.

"Uh, shouldn't we be rescuing Sasuke or something?" Naruto wondered, "I mean, Itachi killed all the other Uchihas, right?"

"But, he wouldn't be saying… that stuff to Sasuke if he wanted to kill him. There's no point," Sakura reasoned, "And we stand absolutely no chance of even annoying Uchiha Itachi. Let's just hope he leaves peacefully afterward."

Thirty mildly traumatic minutes later, Itachi placed his brother's sword by the prone genin's twitching body, and bowed to Naruto and Sakura. "Thank you for watching over my foolish little brother," the missing-nin murmured, "It is nice to know that I am leaving him in capable hands. Oh, and if you let Jiraiya corrupt my brother, I will hunt you down." With these parting words, Itachi casually strolled out the hole in the wall, Shizune in tow. A few minutes later, Jiraiya limped through the hole, clutching his ribs and covered in bruises. The battered sannin put his back to an intact wall and slumped to the floor with a groan of relief.

"Well, that could have gone worse," the sannin muttered, giving his ribs an exploratory prod. Nothing felt broken, but after getting worked over by Tsunade it was best to double-check.

"How could it have possibly gone worse?" Naruto moaned. Sasuke probably would have said something, but he wasn't quite up to voluntary movement yet. "I can't believe Itachi- He- Augh! Too much detail!"

"We're still alive, aren't we?" Sakura pointed out, "So it could've gone worse. Hey, what's that?"

The four ninja turned to look as an origami butterfly wafted into the room through the hole. The paper insect lazily circled the room once before hitting Jiraiya between the eyes with a soft thunk. The sannin unfolded the paper and quickly skimmed the letter written on it. "Hey, it's from Konan, not that that's as surprise with how it got here. Says 'We have found a cure. Place this paper on a flat, open surface with this message face down and channel chakra through it to summon the cure. Do not stand too close to the paper when the seal activates.' Huh, that's oddly convenient. Seems simple enough, though."

While the three Genin stayed safely back, (or it Sasuke's case rolled over to twitch on his face instead) Jiraiya found a clear patch of floor, and bent down. Following the instructions in the letter, he placed the sealed note and gave it a little energy. With a quiet report of displaced air, a massive cloud of chakra smoke filled the casino. Most ninjas don't think anything of it, but it is an accepted fact that ninjutsu which teleport objects or otherwise create something from nothing produce white, quickly-dissipating, chakra-infused smoke. Someone with better chakra control makes less smoke, because they've wasted less power. A summon or teleported object that has a lot of chakra makes more smoke. Jiraiya, an elite ninja, has very good chakra control. Even when summoning a toad the size of a house, the sannin could reasonably expect to produce only a small amount of the chakra smoke. For whatever the teleportation seal had just summoned to have enough chakra to fill the entire room, it would have to be insanely powerful, and Jiraiya was instantly put on guard. He wasn't looking forward to a fight so soon after his battle with Tsunade, but caution was always better than the alternatives.

However, when the smoke cleared, it revealed that the summoning scroll had been keyed to Konan, and someone else. The new arrival wore a simple red cloak in the same style as Itachi's, but with the front left open. He wore the standard jonin uniform of dark clothes and a flak jacket underneath, with a Hidden Rain headband. However, the man was not particularly large, and he looked like he was swimming in his cloak. His long, red hair, which draped down to cover his eyes, made a sharp contrast with his pale skin. He looked as if he hadn't seen the sun in quite a while. To be fair, though, if he lived in Ame, he probably hadn't.

"Nagato?" Jiraiya asked, mentally comparing the children he had taught to the man in front of him. Yahiko's hair was a different color, and he was always the more robust of the two. "Is that you?" The newcomer gazed silently at the Konoha ninja, or at least they assumed he did, since they couldn't see his eyes. It was actually kind of unsettling, the silent, unseen stare. Then, the man moved.

Stepping forward with a dramatic flourish, the Rain ninja swept into a vigorous dance, clicking his heels first on one side, then the other, hair and cloak swirling about him. "That's right, I'm the handsome, badass ninja leader of Hidden Rain, the one you've all heard so much about! Lord Pain of Amegakure, but that's just an alias! You can call me Uzumaki Nagato, Yea-Aaack!" As he finished his performance, Konan trod on the back of the cloak, causing him to lose his balance. After windmilling his arms for a few seconds, the self-proclaimed 'badass' face-planted in the dirt with a comical expression of dismay.

"Don't be such a drama queen," Konan lectured him, "No one will ever take us seriously if you introduce yourself with that stupid dance. Every. Single. Time."

"But Jiraiya-sensei does it," Nagato argued, giving a thumbs-up while still face-down in the dirt, "Besides, it looks cool! And the Raikage's brother was really impressed."

"It looks stupid," Naruto, Sakura, and Konan chorused.

"Fine, fine," Nagato muttered, as he picked himself off the floor and brushed dust and rubble off his cloak, "All joking aside, it's great to see you again, sensei. Who're your friends here?" The still-hidden eyes panned over the genin.

"Uh. Gabba. Wah," Sasuke muttered in response to the stimulus, still mildly catatonic after Itachi's lecture.

"Uh, I'm Haruno Sakura. It's an honor to meet you, sir," Even if he acted kind of goofy, Sakura figured it was probably wise to treat a foreign leader with respect.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo!" Naruto shouted, "You better remember it, 'cause we're gonna haveta talk a lot when I'm Hokage!"

"You're Naruto? That's great!" Nagato replied, "I was hoping to meet you. There aren't a lot of us Uzumaki left, so we've gotta stick together, you know."

"Wait, we're… family?" Naruto asked hesitantly, "Really?"

"Uh, yeah," confirmed the Rain ninja, "I don't think we're closely related, though. Probably second cousins. I don't remember much about my parents, but I know they weren't blonde."

"Well, we could be closer," Naruto theorized, briefly distracted from the bigger questions. "I know I got my hair color from my father, but my mother had red hair like you."

"We'll have to talk, but first, I need to take care of Jiraiya-sensei," Nagato replied, "I know a jutsu that can cure the poison. But you aren't going to like it, sensei."

"Why not?" the sannin asked, "It couldn't possibly be that bad."

"Well," the Rain ninja replied, "You remember that training accident I had that time? The one where I summoned the giant demon head, and it followed us around for a few days until I finally figured out how to make it go away? Well, I found out what the giant demon head does. It heals people. By, uh, eating them. It barfs them back up a few minutes later, with all their injuries healed. It does poisons too. It's really useful, but also really creepy."

"So, I have to let the 'giant demon head' eat me," Jiraiya confirmed, "At this point, I'm willing to try it."

"Ok! Summoning jutsu: Giant Demon Head!" Nagato intoned, clasping his hands. Sure enough, a giant demonic head wearing a samurai-style helmet, shrouded in flames, rose from the ground. The head had weird, glowing purple eyes, with no white or iris. Instead, a rippled pattern expanded outward from the pupils. The demon head opened its mouth, inviting the sannin to step inside.

"You actually called it 'summoning jutsu: giant demon head'?" Jiraiya asked incredulously. "Ah, well, not my place to criticize, I suppose. It certainly is an accurate name. Ok, here goes nothing." With that, the sannin squared his shoulders and marched into the giant demon head's mouth. The being immediately bit down, and began chewing with relish.

"Relax!" Konan told the genin, who tensed up as their teacher vanished into the creature's maw. "It's supposed to do that. He'll be fine. I've been in there a few times. It isn't pleasant, but it works wonders."

After a few minutes of contented mastication, the giant demon head spat out a slimed but significantly healthier-looking Jiraiya and sunk back into the ground. "That was quite possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever done," stated the sannin as he dripped onto the floor. "I think I will make sure I am never, ever poisoned again. Just so I never have to repeat this experience." While Jiraiya tried to clean himself off, Naruto and Nagato began a brief conversation, Konan and Sakura dragging the still limp Sasuke a discreet distance away.

"You're really an Uzumaki?" It still hadn't sunk in for Naruto that he had living family. Everything had happened so fast… He needed time to deal with heavy stuff like this. Having it all pile on at once just wasn't fair dattebayo!

"I should be asking you that!" teased Nagato, "Who ever heard of a blonde Uzumaki? Red hair is practically the clan symbol; it's a reminder of our origins."

"What do you mean?" Naruto asked eagerly.

"According to my parents, the Uzumaki clan isn't originally from the Elemental Nations," Nagato explained, "Before recorded history, we sailed here from across the sea, fleeing… something. My parents didn't say why we left; oral histories aren't super-accurate, and I don't think they knew."

"Wait, then what's the clan symbol?" The jinchuriki was desperate to know more, "I want to put it on my clothes and stuff! Like Sasuke, but, yanno, cool!"

"Uh, I actually have no idea," Nagato felt a little embarrassed by his limited knowledge, and he allowed it to show. "My parents died in the Third Great War, when I was five. I wasn't ready for the details before… they weren't around to tell me. But don't worry," he finished, with slightly forced good cheer, "We've got each other now, and that means things are looking up!"

"I- I'm really not alone anymore?" Naruto started to tear up a bit. He was grateful for his friends, but to have family, real family, was a half-forgotten dream the genin had always assumed would never come true. Acting on instinct, Naruto yanked a startled Nagato into a hug, muffling his tears into the older Uzumaki's cloak.

"Children. Hugging," Nagato gritted awkwardly, going stiff as a board. He was definitely not a huggy person, and fighting a bloody coup against Hanzo for most of his teenage years had not left a lot of time to get comfortable with social situations. "What. Do. I. Do?"

"Hug him back, you dope!" Konan hissed, digging an elbow into her leader's ribs, "Don't just stand there!" Nagato responded by repositioning his arms to gingerly pat Naruto on the back, but the genin ignored Nagato's awkwardness, clinging to him like a life preserver. After a few minutes, though, Naruto ran out of tears and let his cousin go, allowing Nagato to cover his embarrassment by readjusting his cloak.

"And if you think this was good news, you haven't heard anything yet," the Rain ninja informed Naruto, "I'm not the only Uzumaki to have settled in the Land of Rain. You've already met one of them, I think. Uzumaki Karin, she attended the most recent Chunin exam. Got knocked out in the first round by one of your teammates."

"Karin was an Uzumaki?" Naruto supposed it made sense; Karin and Nagato looked a lot alike, after all. Same hair color, same skin tone, similar build… "Who else?"

"There's also another from Konoha; She joined up just after we took control of Amegakure," Nagato shared, "She wanted our protection from someone, although I can't imagine why. No one's ever come after her, and she's one of Ame's top jonin. She can definitely take care of herself. Even better, I know for a fact that she's someone close to you, and is dying to finally meet you, Naruto. Uzumaki-" Whatever Nagato was going to say next was cut off by an explosion that rocked the already-damaged building. Coughing from dust stirred up by the blast, the group of ninja staggered out of the building, only for a man in a blank, white mask and black tights to dash through the group like monochromatic lightning, grabbing Naruto on his way by. By the time the time the startled group had turned to pursue, the way was blocked by a small army of similarly-dressed ninja, who melted out of the shadows. The way they deployed suggested to the more experienced members of the group that for every fighter they saw, more had stayed hidden to ambush any attackers. Jiraiya promptly tried to chase after the kidnapper, but was hit in the leg by a kunai mid-step, and sent crashing to the street. He still wasn't anywhere near 100% after the double whammy of Tsunade and the poison.

"You will not pursue Uzumaki Naruto," one of the masked men instructed tonelessly, displaying an ANBU identification tattoo. Whether it was genuine or not was entirely irrelevant, as neither Nagato, Konan, nor Sakura had the clearance to tell one way or another, and Jiraiya had hit his head on the way down. Sasuke they had stashed out of the way, with one of Jiraiya's summons to watch him. He was still pretty out of it. "The demon vessel is safe in the Roots of the Leaf." Sakura felt like this was probably some kind of pass-phrase, an agreed-upon nonsense sentence given to trusted agents to verify their bona-fides with an ally, but she didn't recognize it from Konoha's most recent code book, or any of the others released while she was a genin.

"The hell you say!" Sakura exclaimed, "I'm going after my friend. Uh, please?" Her righteous anger had slowly faded as she took stock of the odds against her if it came to violence.

"We will rescue Uzumaki Naruto," Nagato confirmed, he and Konan stepping up to loom behind Sakura, "Stand aside. Now." The enemy ninja responded with a withering hail of shuriken and minor jutsu, forcing Nagato to raise a wall of earth for cover. However, the sounds from the other side made it clear that the barrier would not last long, even if somebody didn't decide to just flank it.

"What now?" Sakura half-shouted, making sure she was heard over the noise of combat.

"I can take them," Nagato stated with confidence. "A few flunkies won't stop me."

"In a populated area?!" Konan exclaimed, "Are you crazy? If you cut loose here, we'll be lucky if the civilian death toll is in the hundreds!"

"Guys?" Sakura whispered.

"But if we fight them a few at a time, it'll take forever," argued Nagato, "That guy's already getting away with Naruto! We don't have time to go easy on them! Besides, the normal people probably ran as soon as they felt the killing intent."

"Guys." This time, the genin was a bit louder.

"You need at least some training or ninja relatives to sense killing intent!" Konan replied, "Most people outside of ninja villages can't do that! We can't take the risk!"

"Guys!" Sakura insisted, quite loud now, but Konan and Nagato still ignored her.

"But they're getting away, and this wall isn't going to last much longer!" Nagato was getting frustrated, "We have to do something, and fast!"

"GUYS!" Sakura screamed, finally getting her companions' attention, "Uh, I think someone beat us to it." Sure enough, the stream of fire from the other side of the barrier had tapered off, replaced by the sounds of violent melee combat. Peeking around the wall, Sakura beheld what was possibly the most impressive thing she had ever seen. A whirling blur of silver, black, and red, moving so quickly as to be unidentifiable as anything but a streak of color, was carving its way through the horde of masked ninja, leaving grievous, crippling slashes and charred corpses in its wake. Whoever it was moved so fast as to seem to be in four different places at once, and wherever the blur went, the masked ninja scattered like shattered, shredded bowling pins. Finally, the blur slowed, sliding to a stop in front of an awestruck Sakura. Not because it was tiring, but because there were no enemies left to fight.

The kunoichi standing in front of them wasn't especially tall, but the sun at her back and the blood spattering her weapons and clothes made her seem to tower over Sakura. The mysterious ninja's long, red hair flowed over a Hidden Rain headband and an Akatsuki-patterned cloak, armored gauntlets and greaves peeking out from under the garment. In her left hand, she held an exotic, three-pointed kunai, and in her right, a massive sword, its flat resting on her shoulder, blood dripping from the edge. The strange blade was easily five feet long in the blade alone, straight and double-edged, with a wide, bar guard and a heavy pommel. Even more remarkable, it didn't have the ripple pattern between the hard edge steel and the soft iron back that Sakura knew all katana had. It was far cheaper to make the edge out of good steel, and the back out of a more common metal, which is what made the katana and its cousins so popular. This probably priceless weapon looked like it was made of solid steel! Where did you even get a sword like that? Not even the seven blades of Hidden Mist could boast of such a high quality, oddly forged weapon; they used traditionally forged blades enhanced with special seal-work or unique materials.

"What're y'all sitting around for?" the swordswoman berated them, "They're getting away with Naruto dattebane!"

**A.N. Warning: Minor Spoilers, Katana Cult Bashing, Bad Jokes, and Shameless Advertisement of My Other Fanfiction Ahead. You have been warned.**

**How most people see Uchiha Itachi: A suave, cool, sexy badass**

**How I see Uchiha Itachi: A massive troll. I tried to think of the most horribly awkward and unpleasant thing Itachi could do to Sasuke without causing additional permanent harm, and this is what I came up with.**

**But don't worry too much. Sasuke will get him back in Shippuden. That's right, there will be a time-skip. In fact, there are three chapters left before the time-skip: 'The Return of the Red Flash', 'Pain', and 'Looking Into the Dawn'. When they are complete, I will be taking some time off from this story to write other ones and figure out where I want the plot of **_**Shadow of Rain: A Single Shifting Leaf Shippuden **_**to end up. I know other writers do it differently, but I can't help writing characters into impossible situations unless I have a plot outline to work with.**

** And before the katana cultists get too angry, I actually did my research here. Yes, there is a katana cult. Just because they look cool and exotic to Americans does not make katanas the best swords ever. The katana has a very hard steel edge and a soft iron back, welded together, because steel was expensive and scarce in Japan before it could import metal from other places. In Europe, steel was relatively common, so entire swords were made out of a slightly softer steel. Thus, Japanese swords have a harder edge, but they do not flex very well, while European swords are very durable and can bend, but they take some notches when matched edge to edge with a Japanese sword. Of course, you aren't supposed to parry edge on edge, but it is sometimes unavoidable in the heat of battle. Sakura noticed the difference because every sword she has ever seen but this one has had the wavy pattern that you get from welding the two types of metal together in a Japanese sword. As for why this lady has an obviously foreign weapon, that will have to wait for next chapter, as will her name, although I certainly dropped a ton of hints as to her identity. Suffice to say that I wanted to give a character whose combat style is never really shown in the manga a unique weapon, and a European sword is one of the few weapons that no one in the manga possesses.**

** SPOILER ALERT!**

**[It's Uzumaki Kushina, in all her glory. But, Sakura doesn't know who Kushina is, Jiraiya and Sasuke are unconscious, and Naruto has been kidnapped. And to answer the obvious question, Danzo has really good security, especially compared to the Hokage in the manga. Nagato, Konan, and Kushina thought Naruto knew she was alive and out of the village, although they assumed Danzo hadn't told Naruto why Kushina wasn't around.] **

** SPOILER ENDS.**

** In the meantime, I have other stories! **_**Zoe Walker Does Skyrim**_** places everyone's favorite lunatic Chronomancer into Tamriel during the dragon crisis. Watch as Zoe explains to absolutely everyone why they are complete idiots. Also, Unicron eats Hermaeus Mora. Because Energized Protodermis. There is not a plot point in existence, no matter how far-fetched, that cannot be adequetely explained by Energized Protodermis. It hasn't happened yet, but it will!**

** I will also be writing a Mass Effect/Transformers crossover, **_**Mass Effect Prime**_**. Let's face it, the Protheans are your average, boring, Rome-like progenitor race that has been done dozens of times before. Halo has a Rome-like progenitor race. A fair portion of all fantasy stories have Rome-like progenitor races. Wouldn't Mass Effect be more interesting if the previous cycle had been Cybertronians instead of Protheans? I think it would. **


	10. The Return of the Red Flash

_A few seconds ago…_

_ "What're y'all sitting around for?" the swordswoman berated them, "They're getting away with Naruto dattebane!"_

While Sakura gazed at the new arrival in awe and some fear, Nagato and Konan did some quick planning.

"As much as I'd like to go after Naruto myself," Nagato thought out loud, "That guy was heading towards Konoha. Whether he's allied with them or not, if Konan and I pursue, we could cause an international incident. Foreign soldiers aren't allowed near Konoha unless a Chunin exam is taking place. We don't want to provoke a war. Kushina! You've got plausible deniability, and are going to do this anyway. Take your partner and rescue Naruto. Try to avoid causing too much collateral damage, though. Please?" Kushina, meanwhile, had stashed her kunai and ignored Nagato in favor of talking with someone on a short-wave radio.

"Can you see Naruto?" she half-shouted into the device, "Can you see my boy?"

"You don't have to be so loud!" the man on the other end hissed, "I can hear you just fine, hmm. I see them. Two o'clock from your position. But, my art isn't precise enough to halt the man without harming the boy. And if I descend to get closer, I'll lose sight of them. You'll have to follow on foot, hmm." Without waiting to hear what anyone had to say next, Kushina took off in the direction the man indicated, hair streaming behind her.

"Well, I guess that secret is out," Nagato grumbled. The man briskly shucked off his cloak and reversed it, with the red on the inside and Akatsuki colors facing the world. He then adjusted his headband to hold his hair away from his eyes, revealing the same unearthly color and pattern that the giant demon head had sported. With a gesture, Konan created a similar cloak from paper, and shrugged it on, releasing a minor genjutsu to reveal ears and left eyebrow pierced and studded with dull, black metal. "I suppose I should be shocked and amazed that it stayed hidden this long, with Kushina, Fu, and Deidara running about blowing crap up, and Orochimaru going on recruiting drives in broad daylight in the middle of a large city…"

"W-wait. You're in Akatsuki? The same Akatsuki with Orochimaru, and Itachi, and Tsunade?! You monster!" Sakura rapidly put the pieces together, recovering admirably from her previous shell-shock. "How dare you string Naruto along like that?!"

"Actually, I lead Akatsuki," specified Nagato, "A special force of S-ranked ninja created to defend the people of the Land of Rain. Every member is unwanted by their home village for some reason; if you lot didn't want them I don't see what the big deal is that I gave them a home."

"But- But Orochimaru! And Itachi! And someone who may or may not be Naruto's mother!" Sakura sputtered. It still didn't add up. Everything they'd done screamed that Nagato and Konan were not her enemies, yet they worked with monsters! "What the hell?! Er, heck."

"Well, the only reason I accepted Orochimaru is because Kushina vouched for him," Nagato explained, "I'm pretty sure Konoha was absolutely ok with his kekkei genkai experiments. They wanted super-soldiers, after all, and his process has just over a 1% failure rate. And most of the failures survive! Aside from that, the only thing he's actually accused of is murdering Kushina, who is pretty alive, as you saw."

"She's gotta be an imposter!" the Konoha genin persisted.

"Who can use her husband's, the Fourth Hokage's, personal jutsu?" Nagato countered, "The only people who could possibly use the Hairaishin, which you just saw her use, are the people who invented it. Namikaze Minato, who in fact is six feet under as far as I know, and Uzumaki Kushina. And as for Itachi, he came staggering up to our gates about four years ago, mostly dead, with about thirty civilians in tow. Begged for sanctuary for them, and tried to leave to spare them, and us, the backlash of being seen with him. What kind of human being would I be if I turned him away?"

"Itachi's a mass murderer! He killed hundreds of members of his extended family! He killed his parents! The only reason Sasuke's still alive is that he was off training at the time!" Sakura pointed out, thoughts whirling around her head. Nagato did have a point about Orochimaru. Why did Konoha declare him missing-nin, if he hadn't actually done most of the crimes attributed to him? But, Itachi was pure evil! Right?

"Then why did he lead thirty civilians, Uchiha civilians, into my village, and try to commit suicide to protect them?" asked Nagato, "If I'd let him leave, he'd have been dead by morning. And he wanted to die! I think he still wants to die, honestly."

"No. I can't believe it. You're a liar, and you're conspiring with known criminals, and I- I'll fight you. To defend Konoha, and my friends," That said, Sakura wasn't feeling too great about her chances. Konan had beaten a berserk jinchuriki all by herself, and Nagato had… glowy eyes and a demon head? Whatever he did, it was probably strange and insanely dangerous. But, Naruto was gone, and Sasuke and Jiraiya were unconscious. That meant, it was up to Sakura. Gulp…

But, all Nagato did was reach into his cloak and draw out a field medical kit, which he slowly placed on the ground between himself and Sakura, careful to keep his hands visible. Then, the two Akatsuki agents leaped onto into the roof-tops and dashed away, quickly vanishing from the genin's limited senses. Ordinarily, Sakura wouldn't have trusted anything provided by an enemy, but if Nagato and Konan had wanted to harm them, they hardly needed a trick, and Jiraiya and maybe Sasuke did need medical attention. Dammit!

Meanwhile, Kushina dashed toward her son, once again profoundly grateful that Nagato had assigned her a partner who could fly. It made pursuit so much easier dattebane!

"He's changed direction, hmm," a welcome voice crackled through the radio speaker, "Go a bit more to the left."

"Thanks, Deidara," Kushina acknowledged the help, adjusting her course, "Ugh. This puts him headed directly back toward Konoha, though. That could open up a nasty can of worms."

"Even if mask guy is working for Konoha, he's not going to just bring Naruto back into the village," Deidara reasoned, "That would be stupid, hmm. Although, the way he's moving… I think he expected his friends back there to slow us down enough for a clean getaway. He might be… he is headed straight for Konoha! I don't think he expected an enemy of my artistic talents, hmm."

"People who can fly are pretty rare," agreed Kushina, "Most people don't think to look up outdoors. It's part of what separates A-rank from S-rank. A small part. Anyway, if we're going back to Konoha, we can't let them keep it quiet dattebane! Danzo wants to mess with my son, I see no reason to hold to his little cover story about me being dead. Let's go big for my come-back!"

"A true artistic masterpiece?" Deidara mused, "I definitely have the munitions… And it's been ages since I got to really cut loose, hmm. I think I can manage some excellent fireworks. They want to forget you, to call you dead? Shall we jog their memory, hmm?"

"Hell yes," the former Konoha-nin agreed, "Forget Uzumaki Kushina?! That decrepit cyclops'll wish I died with Minato. I mean, I'm pretty sure he already does, but… You know what I mean dattebane!"

"How large of letters do you want me to carve the message into their infrastructure?" Deidara asked, "Three stories high? Good visibility, lots of smoke, hmm."

"Better make it four, to really get the point across," Kushina instructed, "Don't you worry Naruto, mommy's coming for you. It's all gonna be all right, I promise…"

Approximately forty-five minutes later…

Like the office of every other Kage, the Hokage's office above the Konoha Ninja Academy was very well sound-proofed. Entirely aside from the rowdy children attending class below it, the Hokage could not risk spies listening in on classified conversations. However, this also meant that sounds from outside the building had a rather difficult time reaching the commander's ears. Thus, the first sign of trouble for Shimura Danzo was an out-of-breath and visibly distressed chunin bursting through his doors, already yelling. "Lord Hokage! The village is under attack!"

"What? Again?" Rather than waste time talking, the elderly ninja immediately began to prepare for battle while he grilled the unfortunate messanger, "Who is it? Kumogakure? Iwagakure? Speak, man!"

"Uh, we actually, er, don't know," the chunin admitted, "Stuff just started exploding! No obvious projectiles, though. Really weird. I guess it could be booby traps left by Suna, but captain Akamichi said that it reminded him more of Iwa's demolition corps, back during the Great War…"

"Lord Hokage! You need to hear this!" a second, somewhat more battered chunin flung the door open, coincidentally flattening the first runner between the door and the wall. "The attacker is using the explosions to write messages!"

"Odd. What do they say?" Danzo asked, "Are there any clues as to the identity of our enemy?"  
"Well, most of it is illegible," the chunin related, "I don't think giant explosions make for great calligraphy. We could only decipher one message, and it's mostly gibberish anyway…"

"Tell me anyway," ordered the Hokage, trying to be patient with his likely panicked underling.

"Just three words. 'I'm back dattebane.'" The chunin said, "Does that mean anything to you?"

"Kami, it's her," Danzo breathed, "How did she find out so quickly?! Find jonin-commander Nara! Tell him… Tell him that we are under attack from an S-class strike team, and that if our attackers are not driven off quickly, we- Get down!" Matching action with his words, the canny, old ninja grabbed both chunin and dragged them under his sturdy desk right before a pudgy, white bird covered in shuriken smashed its way through the window, screamed across the room, embedded itself in the far wall, and exploded, throwing all three ninja and the desk out the window to fall two stories to the street below.

"Wha- What the hell was that?!" asked the surviving chunin, "Why are birds exploding?! Oh, Kami, it's like that foreign movie! We're all gonna die!"

"That was explosion style," Danzo analyzed, ignoring the chunin's freak-out, "Iwa's explosion style. With Kushina? But, she didn't defect to Iwa; they would have killed her on sight…Deidara. He went rogue a while back. She's hired the mad bomber." A plan in mind, the Hokage dashed away, leaving a very shell-shocked chunin in his wake.

A few minutes later, Danzo jumped off a rooftop and landed heavily next to jonin-commander Nara Shikaku, field commander and second-in-command of Konoha's armed forces. "Commander Nara, report!" the Hokage commanded.

"Buildings all over the village are detonating, sir!" the heavily-scarred commander stated, "It's almost like the worst-case scenarios we put together for if Iwa made it here during the last war. The explosions seem focused on military structures for now, and there haven't been any civilian deaths so far, thank the gods. We've begun evacuating genin and noncombatants, and the ANBU and jonin corps are scouring the village for signs of the arsonists. Any further orders, sir?"

"Call off the search parties," Danzo ordered, "It isn't Iwa, and the bomber isn't anywhere near the village. We're under attack by the missing-nin Deidara. He could do this from miles away… and miles in the air. We need to get everyone into hardened, underground structures, and prepare for attackers from the ground. Deidara isn't working alone."

"Who else?!" Shikaku asked. Deidara was bad enough; the man could flatten the entire village all by himself at a safe distance. If he was giving covering fire to allies, then whoever it was was probably even worse. Otherwise, Deidara would just destroy everything.

"A group of our own missing-nin have hired him to help get revenge on the village," Danzo shared his working theory, keeping exactly who he though was working with Deidara a secret for now. It probably wouldn't stay secret for long, but he could hope, right? "They likely want to destroy us themselves."

As if trying to back up Danzo's argument, the partially-patched section of Konoha's wall, still being rebuilt after the previous invasion, vanished under a particularly violent blast. Smaller dust clouds, dark smoke, and the occasional collapsing building began tracing a line toward the center of the village as whoever had breached the outer wall began working their way inward. "Holy shit," Shikaku stated clinically, rubbing his chin. Sure, he was concerned, and a little frightened for the safety of those under his command, but he needed to keep a clear head. "Who are these people? Giant explosions aren't exactly Orochimaru's MO, and Itachi could've gotten in without attracting so much attention. But, I don't think anyone else that strong has gone rogue recently… Ugh, troublesome. They're heading this way too, and it doesn't look like the evac teams are even slowing them down. Izumo!"

Shikaku addressed one of a pair of harried chunin awaiting his commands. "Get word to Captain Inoichi and the communications division. We're pulling back to defend the Hokage tower and the surrounding area. Everyone else needs to be in the safe zone, underground, or out of the city, asap!" Izumo immediately began speaking into a hand radio, and Shikaku turned to the chunin's partner. "Kotetsu! Get as many earth style adepts as you can scrape together in a few minutes, and raise some fortifications. Our guests seem to be taking the direct approach. Lets' not make it easy for them. Deidara can't knock our structures down if his buddies are too close." The indicated ninja immediately ran off to follow orders, and the jonin-commander turned back to Danzo.

"You've been talking like you know who these people are," he analyzed, "We need this information, or I'll have to sacrifice good men to get it in battle. The village is under attack! Whatever political consequences there are can wait until we survive!"

"It's… someone who has gone to a lot of trouble to convince me that she is Uzumaki Kushina," Danzo shared reluctantly, "The strategy used and the messages written in the rubble match her style exactly. But it couldn't be her…"

"Because Kushina has been dead for thirteen years," the Nara finished Danzo's sentence for him. "I attended the funeral myself. Hell, I helped take care of Naruto until he was old enough to enter the Academy, along with the other clans. Great kid, if a little rambunctious. Someone's going to a lot of trouble to pick at old scars, and I think we're going to have to remind them why that's a really bad idea. Hm, incoming." The two experienced ninja tracked a single kunai as it arced over the earth ramparts and hit the ground in front of them, not even coming close to hitting someone.

The kunai had a very distinctive design; anyone over twenty in the Elemental Nations would have recognized it immediately. The weapon was a little larger than normal, with a three-pronged point that made it a much better for parrying. The handle was wrapped in white cloth with a dark seal trailing down the handle in elegant script. Every ninja who had survived the Third Great Ninja War knew that kunai on sight; the signature weapon of the Yellow Flash of Konoha, the Fourth Hokage. However, instead of the soft burst of yellow light that had always heralded the Fourth Hokage's appearances, a bright red flare lit up the area, forcing everyone around to avert their eyes. "Minato?" asked Shikaku, shading his eyes against the light. He was sure Minato was dead, but the Nara still felt a little hope that his old friend had somehow pulled off the impossible.

"Sorry ta disappoint dattebane, but Minato ain't here right now," a distinctly female voice rang out, "Still, after all that paperwork and the wedding vows and stuff, I'd like to think I can legally speak for my husband. Anything you wanted to say to him, you can say to me. Pineapple."

"Dammit, Kushina, don't call me that!" Shikaku snarled, momentarily forgetting the circumstances upon hearing the old schoolyard taunt, falling back into familiar repartee as though the years had melted away.

"You're all prickly , and your hair is as ridiculous as ever, but you're still sweet inside," Kushina observed, "Still fits."

"But, the only people who knew about that…" Shikaku rapidly came to his senses, and re-took mental command of the situation. "If you know about that… nickname, then you would've had to have gone to school with me. It- It is you. Kushina, how the hell are you still alive?! I attended your funeral! I saw the body! I touched the body! This shouldn't be possible. And why the hell are you working with Akatsuki?!"

"Ask the cyclops," Kushina stated, "Hey, Danzo! You violated our agreement. I stay out of Konoha, and Naruto stays out of Root, right? Seems simple enough, even for someone like you. So why has my son been kidnapped by your black ops stooges? And where is he now? Depending on your answer, I may or may not have my good friend Deidara start up the boom again. I'm not gonna ask three times; where is Naruto?"

"Ehm, well," Danzo swiveled his gaze rapidly between a stone-faced Shikaku and a steaming-mad Kushina. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Thinking quickly, he made a subtle hand sign behind his back, focusing all his will on the former jinchuriki's mind. "You are not Kushina, but an exceptionally cunning imposter. You stand no chance of defeating us, and should surrender immediately."

"Eh? Why the hell should I give up? I've got you by the stones dattebane!" Kushina responded, "Wait a minute. Heh. Hahah. Gwahahahahahaha!" She doubled over, clutching her stomach with her left hand, as her right was filled with the heavy sword. "I know what you were doin'!" Recovering somewhat, the kunoichi bared the skin around her shoulders, revealing a set of intricate, tattooed seals and black, metal studs. "Itachi told us all about your little secret. Sorry, but Uchiha Shisui's eye isn't gonna work too good on anyone from Hidden Rain, ya ghoul. Even Orochimaru draws the line at actually stealing other people's body parts dattebane! You aren't the only one who knows how a sharingan works, ya know!"

"With all due respect, Lord Danzo, maybe you should show us what's under those bandages of yours," Shikaku switched his suspicious gaze to the Hokage. His loyalty had limits, and Danzo was definitely starting to stretch them. Possible stolen sharingan, and covering up the survival of a good friend? Disgusting. "After all the damage Kushina and her partner have done, I will continue to defend the village to the best of my abilities. The wrongs you have likely committed, Lord Hokage, do not excuse the injuries and deaths we have suffered. However, the next time you feel like going on the offensive, my lord, I'm afraid you'll need a new commander. As a Konoha jonin and clan head I have the right to refuse any mission that is not directly related to the survival of this village, assuming that someone else qualified is available. I will be exercising that right. And since the whole Kushina matter is obviously supposed to not exist, I suppose that means you're about to be attacked… by no one, sir. How can a mere man like myself defend you from a foe that does not exist? It is not possible."

Danzo swept an enraged eye around the ninja around him. How dare they defy his authority like this?! However, more faces than not showed complete agreement with Shikaku's words, and the Hokage slowly came to the realization that he had made a grave mistake.

Danzo was not an unpopular leader; the village and the Land of Fire had prospered under his command. However, overly critical political opponents had a tendency to disappear for a while before changing their position completely, and his aggressive foreign policy had brought Konoha to the brink of war several times. Rumors persisted among the jonin about increased ANBU activity leading up to the Uchiha massacre. The ANBU reorganization immediately after the massacre and Danzo's subsequent policy of only allowing people from the training group Root, which the Hokage personally oversaw, to apply for ANBU since then had not done anything to foster trust. Danzo was thought of as a competent, if heavy-handed leader, and the people of Konoha were perfectly willing to follow him.

Namikaze Minato, the Fourth Hokage, had been loved. The infamous Yellow Flash was still spoken of in awed tones from one end of the continent to the other. In most places, parents checked under their children's beds for monsters and boogeymen. In Konoha, parents checked for the nine-tailed demon fox (or one of Naruto's booby-traps, as he was a prolific prankster). In Konoha's enemies, parents checked for the Yellow Flash, the man who had almost single-handedly brought two ninja villages to their knees. Even now, Minato was remembered as the man who raised the survival rate of high-difficulty missions by nearly fifty percent when he implemented Tsunade's recommendations to have a medic-ninja assigned to each team. The Fourth Hokage had taken time out of his exceptionally busy schedule, not to build secret organizations, but to walk about the village and talk to the people. And, Minato had sacrificed his life and his son (although most people didn't know that last bit) to save the village from the nine-tailed demon fox, the most aggressive of the tailed demon beasts, the biju. Danzo had just as much as admitted that he gravely mistreated the wife and son of the Namikaze Minato in front of his command staff. They might be angry at the attack on their home, but that paled next to the fury they now directed at him. In hindsight, it was obvious that if Deidara and Kushina had actually been attacking indiscriminately, the death toll would have been in the thousands, rather than the paltry eight people who had died of their wounds (they hadn't even died from the bombs themselves; there was a chance to save them, for Kami's sake!) since the attack began.

In short, by now the ninja nearby were not exactly feeling sympathetic toward their Hokage. By and large, ninjas are an exceptionally pragmatic bunch, and unwilling to follow the orders of those they consider unworthy of respect or trust. Still, Danzo made one last grasp for control of the situation. "You cannot take the village's jinchuriki! We would be at war in days! I cannot allow it!"

"You know, Naruto isn't much of a military asset at the moment, and we've been doing just fine without him so far," Shikaku pointed out slyly, "The only thing we'd really lose is the ability to send a jinchuriki out to flatten a minor village here and there, and that's never been a part of Konoha's strategy. Besides, we both know the nine-tailed fox would never cooperate with us enough to be weaponized. If it got out, it'd try to kill us all."

"You see this headband?" Kushina jerked a thumb at her forehead, "Ame. A. M. E. After what you did to me an' Orochimaru, what you're doin' right now to my son, I could care less whether Konoha is under attack. Sure, I might try to help some specific people, but the village as a whole is corrupt and collapsing under its' own weight a' stupid. I think my grand-uncle Hashirama would be disgusted with what his village has become, and my husband too. Something to consider, cyclops. Speakin' of which, you're still doing stuff to Naruto right now dattebane! Well, you ain't buying any more time! Take me to him. Now!"

Once again, Danzo was forced to consider his (limited) options. Giving up the jinchuriki's power was absolutely unacceptable, but the chunin and jonin nearby were already halfway to mutiny… However, the network of walls Shikaku had raised to slow Kushina down had also isolated the conversation from outside ears, as most of the ninja were further out, having not connected the stray kunai with Kushina getting in. Deidara was unlikely to strike with Kushina nearby, and the loyal ANBU agents nearby outnumbered the few chunin and jonin within earshot nearly eight to one. Kushina was high A-rank before she left, and with the Hairaishin probably low S-rank. He could take her. ANBU had enough fliers to drive off the missing-nin from Iwa. This could still be contained!

"ANBU!" Danzo decided, "Take these traitors into custody!" Kushina stowed her kunai and took up a guard position, teeth bared in a feral grin. Her sword lit along the edges with dark, red flames and glowing seals. That was new.

"Wrong choice dattebane!" She yelled, residual chakra in the air swirling her hair about like a blazing halo, "You bastards are gonna burn for what you've done to my baby!"

"You're arresting all of us?" Shikaku clarified, "I don't think that is a wise choice, Danzo. Perhaps you should reconsider." The ANBU agents responded by leaping from the shadows to swarm the nearby ninja. Most of the so-called traitors fell quickly to weight of numbers; most ANBU range in skill from high-level chunin to low-level jonin (B-rank to A-rank). However, Shikaku and Kotetsu wisely decided to stick close to Uzumaki Kushina.

The fastest (and thus closest to Kushina) two ANBU were met with Hairaishin kunai propelled at barely subsonic speeds by Kushina's expert chakra-enhanced strength. While not nearly Tsunade's equal, the former jinchuriki was known before her 'demise' for her talent for boosting her body to superhuman level. One ANBU took the knife in the thigh and fell, bone broken by the sheer force behind the tiny weapon, but the other deflected it with a metal bracer. This didn't help him at all, as Kushina dropped her sword, teleported to the kunai with another flash of light, and pile-drove the unfortunate masked ninja into the ground with a move that was half kick, half brutal earth jutsu. A third flare of light returned her to Shikaku, sword in hand, just in time to unleash a blazing dragon of blue fire from her mouth that vaporized a spread of rock bullets and shuriken before charging Danzo, mouth gaping. The three ANBU who threw themselves in front of the raging, semi-living flames to raise walls of earth and water failed to slow the monster down at all, forcing the Hokage into an undignified scramble to safety. The dragon, deprived of its' primary target, burned a hole all the way through the administrative tower before finally dissipating.

Understandably hoping to put Kushina on the defensive and ward off another ridiculously overcharged jutsu, Danzo retaliated with one of his favorite wind techniques: the vacuum blade. Most wind jutsu are weak against fire style, but the subset of vacuum techniques creates projectiles with airless voids in their centers, giving the fire no oxygen to feed on. Even better, unless one can see chakra, vacuum jutsu are completely invisible. A little dismemberment would put Kushina on the ropes for sure.

Somehow, impossibly, she saw it coming and dove for safety, dragging Shikaku and Kotetsu with her. The powerful jutsu shaved a few centimeters off the jonin-commander's ponytail, but did not other lasting damage. Danzo barely managed to shake off the utter surprise in time to leap over Kushina's retaliation, a wave of more conventional fire from her sword. The Hokage's follow-up, a burst of vacuum bullets, was mostly dodged as well, although a few headed for the badly outclassed Kotetsu were instead intercepted by Kushina's sword. How?! There was no way she could have seen the jutsu coming, and how had her sword survived with no damage?! If you hit a sword hard enough, it bends! They aren't supposed to just vibrate for a few seconds after a heavy hit to the flat. Swords don't work that way!

As more ANBU unsuccessfully tried to pile onto the treasonous (honorable and possessing what for a ninja passes as integrity) trio, Danzo desperately strategized. Between Shikaku and Kushina's flaming sword, hand-to-hand combat was obviously a bad idea. The Hokage could try to place a seal, but Kushina is the last Uzumaki seal master, and doubtlessly better with seals than him. He could try a summon, but all of his useful ones were large targets, easy pickings for another fire dragon. Danzo sent another vacuum blade sweeping toward his foes, but Kushina used the Hairaishin to flash herself and her allies out of the line of fire, leaving the hapless ANBU to fall to their own leader's attack. Genjutsu would probably be foiled by Kushina's seals, and just ensnaring Shikaku and Kotetsu wouldn't be worth the chakra. Realizing too late how much jeopardy he was in, Danzo removed his right arm from its unnecessary sling and began to undo the restraints that kept its power carefully hidden and sealed away. However, he only managed to undo the first one before Kushina slammed the pommel of her sword into his head, stunning Danzo long enough to pin him face-down in a painful hold.

"Now then," the former jinchuriki leered, "Let's talk about where you hid my son."

"If you think I'll talk, you know nothing," Danzo replied, "Nothing you can say or do will lead me to betray Konoha."

"Oh Deidara," Kushina called sweetly into her radio, "Why don't you blow the old bastard's face off the mountain? It would raise property values immensely, I think, to have that eyesore gone."

With every explosion, Danzo flinched like he was the one taking the blasts, but he remained stubbornly silent, at least until Kushina directed her gleeful partner to begin systematically carpet-bombing the outer wall to splinters. The jinchuriki was an irreplaceable military asset, but without the wall and the seals built into it, anyone could simply walk into the village without so much as a pat-down. Naruto was valuable, but the wall was all that stood between Konoha and annihilation.

"Naruto is in my private training facility, deep under the main ANBU barracks," he said, totally defeated. This was the worst defeat suffered by Konohagakure since the First Great Ninja War, when Uchiha Madara, then the patriarch of the Uchiha clan, defected and attacked the village with the nine-tailed fox, the demon forced to obey his commands by an extraordinarily powerful genjutsu. Now the fox, claimed by Konoha in that very same war, would be leaving the village for good. But what choice did he have? The welfare of the people would always come before any personal ambitions of greater power for Konoha and himself that Danzo might possess.

Kushina slapped a seal on the back of Danzo's neck, and breathed a sigh of relief as the old ninja went limp, rendered insensate. "Thank the Kami he spilled. I don't think I could've gone through with that dattebane. As much as Danzo deserves whatever he gets, I don't actually want to destroy the village. Now, time to save Naruto!"

"Wait a second, Kushina," She might have forgotten a certain loose end, but Shikaku hadn't. The jonin flipped Danzo onto his back and carefully peeled back the bandages over the Hokage's right eye. "Yep, he's got a sharingan alright. This would go a long way toward explaining why he was always such a persuasive speaker; the man was putting a genjutsu on us." With cold detachment, Shikaku sterilized a kunai with a brief fire jutsu, and carefully scored a line across the stolen eye, before using the concealing bandages to ensure that the fallen leader wouldn't bleed to death. "Unfortunately, we can't let him die. Who else would lead? Tsunade hasn't been seen in years, Jiraiya lacks a certain diplomatic competence, and Gai is entirely unsuited for the position in every way possible."

"What about you?" Kushina asked, honestly puzzled, "You could do it, pineapple! You'd be a great Hokage dattebane!"

"Hm, no," Shikaku disagreed, "Entirely aside from my personal objections, I just helped a defector and her arsonist buddy mutilate the Hokage and pile up a small mountain of ANBU corpses. We recently installed security cameras, visual only, around secure locations in the village to take advantage of the new technology. They have video proof that Kotetsu and I are traitors, and are unlikely to listen to anything the three of us have to say in our defense. Man, I can't believe the last word I said to my wife and son before I went missing-nin were 'troublesome'. How troublesome."

"Why don't we try to get them out too?" plotted Kushina, "After all, we're already going to get Naruto, why not your family too?"

"Can your exit strategy handle two extra people?" Shikaku asked, "Oh, Kami." He knew that look. He KNEW that look. "You do have an exit strategy, don't you? Kushina?"

"Of course I do dattebane!" Kushina responded hotly, "Er, Deidara? Once we're ready, can you summon me out?"

"I figured I would have to," the missing-nin from Iwa replied, "But how're Naruto and your buddies getting out?"

"Once I'm outside, I'll use the Hairaishin," she said, an improvised plan rapidly coming together, "We'll have to be close to the wall when you summon me, but it'll work."

"How many people, though?" Deidara questioned, "You know about your… difficulties last time."

"If I need more, which I will, er, Shikaku, take this kunai!" the former jinchuriki handed Shikaku a hairaishin kunai, "You'll need it to get out."

"Can't you just do what Minato always did, and put the seals directly on us?" asked a perplexed Shikaku.

"Uh, well, I'm not as good at it as Minato was," admitted Kushina, "He had insane chakra control; he could make hundreds of seals all over the continent. If I make more than ten, or they get more than half a kilometer away from me, the seals stop working… So I've got four permanent kunai, a permanent seal on my sword, and five free seals to put on other stuff as needed."

"That… actually explains a lot," came the reply, "Well, the Nara have a clan emergency shelter in the center of the clan lands. Ordinarily the Nara forest is closed to outsiders, but since you're with me, and I'm technically still clan head, we can get in. Naruto first, though. He's in the most danger."

"We'll have to move fast," Kushina though out loud, "Before people stumble on the 'small mountain of ANBU corpses', as you put it. Let's move out dattebane!"

A few minutes of furtive movement, a harrowing alley fight, and a massive explosion later, Kushina, Shikaku, and Kotetsu descended into the bowels of Danzo's secret lair. Once underground, the ANBU guards were no match for Shikaku's powerful jutsu.

The Nara clan does not actually have a kekkei genkai, but they use a set of secret jutsu carefully kept within the clan. While anyone technically can use the clan jutsu, only the Nara actually know how. The Nara secret techniques allow a clan member to manipulate shadows to temporarily control the movements of a foe, or even give darkness physical form. The jutsu is relatively weak outdoors, where sunlight can severely reduce the jutsu's range. Underground, indoors, or at night, on the other hand, a Nara is only really limited by his or her chakra reserves and creativity. And the other thing the Nara are known for is producing geniuses.

Without time for the subtle approach, Kushina elected to search room by room. Kick down the door, neutralize resistance, rescue prisoners, move on. Before reaching Naruto, the Konohan trio picked up several prisoners-of-war from Kumo, a heavily sedated Gaara of the desert, three eyeless and torture-broken Uchiha, and a shapeshifting berserker who snapped out of his blood-rage when Kushina smashed him flat with a chair and gave him some killing intent. Even if she was no longer the container of the nine-tailed fox, holding the demon had some lasting effects. One of the most useful, in her opinion, was the ability to generate demonic killing intent. Rage-man, who called himself Jugo, promptly latched onto the Akatsuki agent as the only person his dark side feared.

However, the last door in the hall fell to reveal an achingly familiar mop of blonde hair (so much like his father dattebane!) over sparkling blue eyes, now unsettlingly empty. Naruto sat strapped into a chair, unable to move a muscle, staring blankly at a pattern of flashing lights on the far wall, while a pair of ANBU next to him focused on what was probably a genjutsu of some sort. At least, they stayed focused until Kushina and Shikaku… disagreed with their orders.

A sinuous, silent tendril of darkness reared up behind the masked ninja on the right, binding his limbs before snapping his neck. Kushina took the direct approach and split the ANBU on the left from crown to groin with a single flaming slash.

"Naruto! Naruto! Are you alright?" Tearing at the straps with a kunai, Kushina tearfully shook Naruto by his shoulders while wrenching him away from the flashing lights, "Speak to me dattebane!" Slowly, the Naruto blinked once, twice.

"Dattebane?" he croaked, "No, is dattebayo. Dattebayo. Ya go' it wrong. I'd know. S'my word, right? Ev'thing feels fuzzy. Who?" Without waiting for an answer, his eyes rolled up in his head and he went down in a heap.

"Oi, kumo guys, Kotetsu! Carry, please," Kushina instructed, "We're getting Shikaku's family, and we're getting outta here!"

"Are- Are you a hallucination?" asked one of the Uchiha, "I don't think I'm supposed to talk to hallucinations… But it's probably a bad sign that I can't remember why."

"Am I? No. This is real. We're all getting out of here, I swear," Kushina assured him, "Why? Because I am Uzumaki Kushina, and I never, ever go back on my word. Ever."

With most of the remaining fighters in the village drawn off by another of Deidara's bombing runs, the motley crew of escapees and missing-nin ran (or limped) to the Nara compound at best speed (surprisingly fast, for badly mistreated prisoners of war). In order to get them at least a grace period of trust, Shikaku led the way.

After the Nara clan head rapped on the door, a terse voice snapped out a statement, or was it a question? "The king?"

"The future," Shikaku replied with the countersign, and the shelter's thick, iron door was ponderously cracked open.

"Jonin-commander? Shouldn't you be on the front lines?" asked a confused chunin, "What's going on?"

"I need to speak with Yoshino and Shikamaru immediately," Shikaku stated, keenly aware of how much time they had lost already rescuing the prisoners. He didn't want to leave them behind either, but they were making things more difficult.

"Wha? But isn't Konoha under attack..?" the chunin considered the request for a few seconds, "Oh. I-in that case, yeah, sure. I'll just go get them, then." The only reason he could think of for the clan head to want to see his family at a time like this was if the battle for Konoha… wasn't going well. The chunin supposed that if he thought he was about to die, he'd want to see his wife one last time too.

Soon enough, husband, wife, and son were reunited with a brief embrace. Yoshino had the same Nara features as her husband, slender frame, dark hair, pale skin, and a sharp wit, while Shikamaru looked almost exactly as Shikaku had at that age. "What's wrong, husband?" she asked, having come to the same conclusion as the guard earlier, "How bad is it?"

"You need to come with me," He replied shortly, "We're short on time, and you and Shikamaru need to follow, now."

"But, why?" Yoshino wondered, already trailing after Shikaku. She trusted him more than enough not to argue, no matter how confused she might be.

"I can't explain," Shikaku stated, holding a finger to her lips to silence any protest before he finished his sentence, "Because it's easier to show you. Yoshino, meet Uzumaki Kushina, an old friend." Yoshino took the mismatched group in at a glance, and dropped her jaw so far Shikaku felt an urge to catch it before it hit the floor.

"Kushina? You're alive? How is that possible?" the Nara matriarch questioned, "Did you? What? Why are you- Akatsuki?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm alive," Kushina shared, "And we kind of rolled the old cyclops, and rescued all these prisoners, including my son, so we really gotta move dattebane!" Yoshino closed her mouth with an audible snap.

"I am going to expect an explanation when we are safe, dear," she told her husband, "For your sake, it had better be thorough and well-reasoned, or you're sleeping on the couch for the rest of your natural life!"

While Shikaku tried to placate his enraged wife, the now-expanded group of fugitives headed for the outer wall, Deidara doing his best to draw attention elsewhere before slipping off to begin the exit plan. However, as most hastily-constructed plans turn out, Kushina's had a minor flaw. The barrier seals around Konoha's walls have many functions, a fair number of which Danzo added after Kushina left the village. Among the new features are the ability to interdict summoning and other teleportation jutsu by anyone who isn't a Konoha resident. Such jutsu, when cast outside the wall, cannot affect anything inside, and vice versa, unless you have been keyed into the seals.

"Uh, Kushina, you didn't show up, just a lot of smoke, hmm," Deidara said nervously through the radio, "What happened?"

"Danzo must've upgraded the barrier seals," theorized the former jinchuriki, "We can't summon out!"

"But I thought fearless leader's special trick was supposed to punch through that, hmm," Deidara protested, "This is- Now what?"

"I'm gonna call Nagato," Kushina replied, already switching to a different frequency, "Oi, fearless leader, I'm in a bit of a bind dattebane."

"What went wrong this time?" Nagato replied wearily, "This isn't like that time in Kusagakure, is it? Do you need an exit? Backup? A distraction?"

"Uh, no, not that bad," Kushina reassured him, "But my original escape plan's a bust, and we're gonna be caught soon. Deidara's too far away to help in time, and we need more firepower than I've got to get out!" Sure enough, the stronger ninja in the group could hear and sense Konoha's finest heading their way.

"You want to use… that jutsu?" the leader of Amegakure asked, "Are you sure?"

"It's not like anyone will know what it is," she justified, "and we don't have a lot of choices left if we want to get through Konoha's walls before hunter squads show up dattebane!"

Rather than respond again, Nagato must have done… something, because Kushina began moving with purpose. She stripped off the top half of her cloak and belted the whole garment around her waist like a skirt, then removed her shirt and tossed it aside, leaving her clad in nothing but underwear and the cloak (and whatever pants she was wearing, but no one could see them under the cloak). With most of her skin bared, the seals and metal studs were revealed to extend all over her torso and arms.

"Why the hell are you stripping here?" Shikaku asked, turning his son's head away.

"It's not by choice, but I don't want to ruin another set of clothes," Kushina explained, "Just, uh, don't freak out, ok? This jutsu looks kind of weird."

She took a deep breath, and her eyes rippled, blue irises subsumed by glowing purple and concentric circles. The area around her shoulders bulged, and with a clicking clatter four more arms sprouted to take their place with the original limbs. Each arm fanned out its skin to reveal endlessly complex clockwork underneath, churning and whirring, as she turned to face the massive wall. A grinding sound from below her suggested that her feet were doing something similar to anchor her to the ground.

"Ya may want to cover your ears dattebane!" advised the former jinchuriki, "This is gonna be loud!" Strange devices began to deploy from the inside of her unnatural limbs, clicking and ratcheting into place, far more than could possibly fit inside the original appendages.

"Alright, you wall!" Kushina crowed, as each device oriented a tube or blocky instrument toward the wall, "Take this dattebane!" At each tube a ruddy glow began to build with a high-pitched scream of tortured air and physics. "ASURA PATH! MORE DAKKA!"

When the onlookers finally blinked the spots from their eyes, Kushina, now back to normal (for a certain value of the word normal), was busy reclaiming her shirt and sword. A huge u-shaped section of the wall was simply gone, as was a substantial portion of the forest behind it.

"What. The hell. Was that?" Nara Yoshino managed after a few seconds of stunned silence.

"Eheheh, I think I overdid it a bit dattebane," Kushina replied, scratching the back of her head in an embarrassed gesture that unknowingly mirrored Naruto exactly, down to the sheepish grin and squinty eyes. "I can explain, but we should probably go now. Giant destructo blasts are kinda easy to track."

The group set out again, headed for a rendezvous with Deidara and safety in the air, but neither Yoshino nor Shikaku were willing to let Kushina go without an explanation. However, the big picture turned out to be fairly simple. The details, Kushina maintained, were a clan secret.

"Basically, another of the Akatsuki can use his special jutsu to give the rest of us extra powers when we really, really need it," she shared, "I don't wanna give too many details in case someone tries to use them against us, since I don't know alla you that well. No offense dattebane."

"None taken," many of the escapees from Danzo's prison chorused.

"Suffice to say that it's got some hefty limitations on how it can be used, and it needs a lot of chakra, so we don't use it very often, but as you saw, the jutsu packs a real punch," Kushina continued, "And, even better, we each get different powers, so ya can't figure out us all just by seein' what I did. Ain't that awesome?" Everyone dually agreed that yes, it was awesome. Best not to annoy the lady who shoots giant beams of death from her fingers.

Soon enough, the group met up with Deidara, a rather effeminate, blonde man in an Akatsuki cloak. Deidara, the infamous mad bomber of Iwa, is well-known for his mastery of the explosion style kekkei genkai, a technique that can animate and violently detonate constructs of clay infused with the user's chakra. The constructs can mimic whatever they are designed to look like, allowing them to double as mounts, as they would for the get-away, or precision-guided air-to-surface missiles, as they did during Deidara's attacks on Konoha. In fact, the main reason Deidara is considered an S-ranked ninja is that he can effectively attack enemies at extreme ranges thanks to his unique, self-guided bombs.

Once the group got into the air, they were home free. Konoha, as far as they knew, didn't have any flyers to follow them with, and in any case the fugitives had a huge head-start over their pursuers. As such, they had no problems heading straight home to Amegakure, never noticing an odd, pitch-black hawk that kept pace with them for the entire journey…


	11. Pain

Four days after the kidnapping and counter-kidnapping of Uzumaki Naruto, Jiraiya, Sakura, and Sasuke limped through the gates of Konoha, Jiraiya still nursing his stab wound. To their surprise, they were greeted by a harried, experienced member of the Genin Corps, rather than part of the chunin rotation that had guarded the gate almost since the village's founding. (Not the same chunin; no active-duty ninja was over a hundred years old. However, all chunin take a turn watching the main entrance to the village.)

"What's going on?" Jiraiya questioned the man. The only reason for a genin to be watching the gates was if no chunin were available, which would only happen if the village was attacked, and there were very heavy casualties. "Why are the gates being left to a genin? If we were hit that bad there should be more security than this!"

"Uh, I don' know the details, but the village got hit by attackers from Amegakure," the genin explained, "Rumor mill suggests they were allied with Iwagakure, that they want ta gouge out everyone's right eyeball, that the Fourth Hokage came back to help us in our darkest hour, that the current Hokage was attacked by flamin' Uchiha ghosts, and that the invaders summoned zombie jinchuriki ta turn ANBU headquarters into a smokin' crater, kill the Nara clan head and eat his family too. The official story is that members of an organization called Akatsuki infiltrated the village and kidnapped the demon brat, erm, jinchuriki. But infiltrators don' leave giant holes in the outer wall or the Hokage monument. Yep, the gov'mint never tells ya the real story. They're hiding something, more than usual for ninja gov'mint, I mean."

"As interesting as the speculation is, what actually happened?" the sannin asked, "Since you seem like an… informed person."

"Ya seem to have mistaken me for someone who gets told things," the genin drawled, "I've been pushing paper for over ten years now, and I am not remotely qualified for half the crap they've got me doin'. Sorry, sir. You know as much as I do."

"Then allow me to fill in the pieces," Kakashi was heard before he was seen, as the jonin jumped down from a roof. He looked like he had seen battle recently; his clothes were torn and bloodstained in several places and his headband was pushed up, although his transplanted eye remained tightly shut. His left arm was in a sling, he moved somewhat gingerly, to be expected if he was recovering from injuries.

"Are we still under attack?" Jiraiya immediately got ready for battle, as much as he could with a still-wounded leg.

"Eh?" Kakashi looked down at himself in a slight daze, as though he had only just noticed how he looked. Groping around his forehead, the jonin managed after a few seconds to pull his headband back to its usual place. "No, the attackers left a few days ago. But I've been on call since then and I haven't had time to clean up. Or for much sleep. Or food. The short version is, Akatsuki attacked Konoha. Only two attackers: a scarily competent master or mistress of disguise and Deidara the Mad Bomber. While Deidara bombed the village and the Hokage monument, the infiltrator used his disguise skills to infiltrate high command posing as Uzumaki Kushina for some reason, and murder Nara Shikaku and his wife and son. Then, disguised as Shikaku, he grabbed Naruto. Deidara blew a giant hole in the wall and the Akatsuki escaped aboard one of his flying clay constructs. ANBU tracked them to Ame, and Lord Hokage is leading most of the Jonin Corps, half the Chunin Corps, and all of ANBU to stage a counter-invasion, destroy Akatsuki, and rescue Naruto. He left a few experienced ninja, like me, to hold down the fort until they return. The chunin in the city are busy with the duties jonin usually perform. No zombies, no eye theft, and no people who work for Iwagakure."

"How long ago did they leave?!" Jiraiya was feeling pretty alarmed at this point, "I've got to save them! Quick! I need a medic, and then I really need to get moving!"

"What? Why? They attacked us, wearing the face of my sensei's wife, and kidnapped my student," Kakashi replied, "Akatsuki deserves what it gets. If I hadn't been wounded so badly in the attack I'd be right along side them. Just got off the disabled list and my other arm goes and gets broken…"

"Not Akatsuki, the army!" the sannin explained, "We gained some intelligence on the membership of Akatsuki. Based on what you said, I figure Danzo turned out the village elite, and brought Might Gai with him. That's six, maybe seven thousand ninja. With them, he'd definitely beat the forces they're confirmed to have: Orochimaru, Fu, Konan, the unknown infiltrator, Deidara, and maybe thirty lesser jonin. But Akatsuki doesn't have five S-ranked ninja; they've got ten."

"Ten?" Kakashi croaked. That was bad. One S-ranked ninja was worth a minor ninja village. Ten, working together, would be exponentially stronger. "We're going to be slaughtered."

"It gets worse," Jiraiya continued, "I have confirmation that Uzumaki Nagato, Deidara, Senju Tsunade, and Uchiha Itachi are full members as well."

"Wait, who's Uzumaki Nagato?" Kakashi asked curiously, "I've never heard of him, but the rest are big names, so I figure you know something I don't."  
"He's the second Sage of the Six Paths," Jiraiya replied, "He's got the Rinnegan. The legendary third ocular kekkei genkai. The one that the sharingan and byakugan are rumored to be inferior mutations of. The one whose last known user created the basics of modern ninjutsu and sealing. I don't actually know what it does, aside from letting you use all five types of elemental ninjutsu and probably heal others, but… I need to intercept Danzo before he gets there, or they'll all be killed! I can't believe Nagato and Konan played me so damn well! I fell for their goody-goody act hook, line, and sinker, and now they've got Naruto! I guess the person who originally grabbed Naruto made it as far as Konoha before Deidara and friend caught up to him."

"That could be a problem," Kakashi stated unhappily, as the implications sunk in. "If they made good time, they should be attacking within a few hours. There's no way we can get word to them. Even we exhaust ourselves, we won't get there in time. And what's this about a counter-kidnapping? Ugh, third party involvement is almost never good. I assumed you got back early and got whisked into debriefing, then they grabbed Naruto right after. Now we have to track down yet another shadowy organization. Great."

* * *

On a hill outside the village hidden in the rain, carefully chosen to be out of range of even the most optimistic archer, Danzo surveyed the plains surrounding Amegakure, which would probably be a battlefield in a few hours. While he would have sent infiltrators in to the city already against almost any other foe, and probably tried for a surprise attack, Amegakure had repeatedly proven its security extremely tight. If as the Hokage suspected, Akatsuki included a highly competent sensor ninja (a specialist ninja who uses extreme superhuman senses and usually a heightened ability to sense the chakra of others to gather intelligence and find enemies), a stealthy approach would be noticed right away. And the last thing anyone wanted was urban warfare with a forewarned Orochimaru on the other side. The snake sannin was dangerous enough in open battle, but in enclosed spaces, on familiar ground, he would be nearly unbeatable. The rogue sannin was widely regarded as one of the most competent assassins to ever live. Danzo had plans to defeat all of the Akatsuki, assuming he could get them into the open, and once the army began bombarding the city the defenders would have to emerge or watch their civilian charges die.

However, first, Danzo had to try (sigh) diplomacy. While in some nations the Daimyo had very little power (the land of Water, in which the Mizukage of Kirigakure effectively was the Daimyo came to mind), the Land of Fire's Daimyo and his legions of samurai retainers still wielded the greater share of military and especially political power. Unlike some nations, the Daimyo of fire never relied completely on the military power of his ninja, preferring a more balanced armed forces. Konoha was still one of the strongest ninja villages in the world, but this was more a product of the size of the Land of Fire than a reflection of its position in the Daimyo's military. Konoha was extremely important and well-funded, but it was not autonomous, and it answered to the Daimyo, who was strong enough to dictate policy even to the Hokage. And the Daimyo firmly believed that one should not enter a war without first trying to reach a negotiated settlement. Danzo often railed in private at the Daimyo's stubborn insistence on following the code of Bushido, which most ninja tried to keep as far away from them as humanly possible, but in public the Hokage had to follow the Lord of Fire's decrees.

So, reluctantly, Danzo sent an appropriately expendable messanger to express his desire to negotiate, in the most insulting and condescending manner possible. After all, no leader of a minor village that wasn't even big enough to warrant its own location outside its nation's capital had a tenth of the status of the Hokage. And, if the leader got irritated enough to attack, or kill the messenger, so much the better. They could skip the tiresome talking that both sides would likely ignore and get on with the real business. Hanzo of the Salamander had been quick to anger; hopefully his successor wouldn't be any cooler-headed.

But it was not to be, as the messenger was accompanied back towards Konoha's lines by a person in an Akatsuki cloak and straw hat to protect against the omnipresent rain. After brief consideration, Danzo decided to meet with the messenger personally; he wanted to make sure the negotiations went properly, and if a single person posed that much threat to one of Konoha's best ninja, the war effort was already in dire straits. Soon enough, the man was shaking the water out of his hat in front of a tent set up to protect the Hokage, and more importantly his documents, from the weather. Without the hat, the messenger was revealed as another red-head, though thankfully not Kushina. That could have been awkward.

Though Danzo himself was seated, he made sure to have all the other chairs removed before the messenger arrived, a calculated insult, forcing the foreigner to stand around like a subordinate brought in for reprimanding. "Let's keep this short. You ought to already know what we want," the Hokage informed his dripping guest, "Release Uzumaki Naruto and the missing-nin who assaulted Konoha to my custody, or we shall raze your village to the ground, and may the Kami help any who remain inside."

"You would condemn the thousands of civilians within my walls to reach but three lives?" replied the negotiator in shock, "With all due respect, Lord Hokage, that is monstrous!"

"Your walls?" The Hokage's mind latched onto that detail, "You are a person of some importance, then?"

"You could say that. I am Uzumaki Nagato, the current leader of the village hidden in the rain," the Rain ninja related.

"In that case, perhaps when they see you as our captive, your people will see sense!" Danzo's eye glinted, as he gave his next set of orders, "Guards. Take this man into custody." Nagato made no move to struggle as a pair of ANBU bound his wrists. "With some unfortunate casualties, and their glorious leader bound at my feet, your people will doubtlessly come to see things my way."

"You believe death and war will solve all your problems?" asked Nagato, "Don't you see how wrong this is? You're just going to make things worse!"

"You seriously thought your people could attack one of the greatest military powers in the world and get away with no consequences?" Danzo countered, "The blood of your people will show the world that Konohagakure is not to be trifled with, even now."

"You have been in war before; you lost your sensei, the Second Hokage, and probably many friends to the endless conflicts that consume our world, dominated as it is by ninja," Nagato pleaded, "As Hokage you have to have seen countless lives lost, even in this time of peace, lives you were responsible for. You were torturing my cousin, and my rescue team inflicted minimal casualties! We showed as much restraint as we could! If the Raikage had known you had captured one of his men, let alone a relative, he would have personally done his best to level the village. The Mizukage would have done the same, and the less said of what the Tsuchikage would have done the better."

"Do you have a point, prisoner?" the Hokage cut in, "I have a city to start razing."

"My point is that you create misery, hardship, death, and pain," Nagato's eyes narrowed, the minor genjutsu that disguised them as an unremarkable black fizzling out under the Rain ninja's intense emotions to reveal the rippled purple underneath, "You do not do so because it is necessary, or even because it is unavoidable, but because you can. A wise man once said to me that pain is not a bad thing, no matter how you feel at the time. It is through your pain and loss that you come to understand the pain and loss of others. You experience empathy. You begin to grow up. However, this does not make pain any more welcome. The people of Amegakure are under my protection, and though my village is small we are not weak. I am not weak. To spare my people the pain I felt through years of the Third Great Ninja War, I will act against you, Shimura Danzo, and the people who look to you for guidance. Do not lead them astray, Lord Hokage."

"Are- Are you threatening me?" The gravity of the situation warded off a full laugh, but Danzo allowed himself a smirk. The Hokage, focused completely on his prisoner, didn't notice the uneasy looks shared by his advisors. They could tell that the Rain ninja at least didn't think he was bluffing. "You are bound, surrounded, outnumbered, and outclassed. You brought this… this 'pain' upon yourselves, and you shall reap what you have sown. Amegakure shall fall this day."

"After living through such times of hardship, have you learned nothing?" Nagato made one last try to sway his adversary, "Do not make the mistakes of our predecessors! You can lead your people into peace. It doesn't need to be this way."

"You are but an idealistic fool," Danzo's stony expression could have been mistaken for his former bust on the mountain above Konoha. "Power, military power, is all that matters in this world. Peace is an illusion, supported by worthless scraps of paper."

"You really haven't learned a thing from the pain you have experienced, the pain you have inflicted," Nagato's eyes grew cold and distant as he straightened himself up, almost a different person from the awkward uncle who had greeted Naruto and the impassioned speaker who had tried to persuade Danzo, "You have not yet grown up. I will educate you. If power is all you understand, I can speak the language of power. May the Kami have mercy on your soul… and mine." Both the ropes and the ANBU agents fell away from Nagato, the former slit by a fine blade, the latter gasping for breath, their strength and chakra inexplicably gone. Now free, Uzumaki Nagato, the second Sage of the Six Paths, raised his hands to their widest extent, palms facing outward, as his Rinnegan blazed with baleful light.

"YOU WILL KNOW PAIN."

From Nagato's body, a nigh-invisible dome of power sprang forth, expanding in all directions, only visible through its interactions with physical objects. Although the jutsu moved quickly, some especially swift or canny ninja had time to brace themselves or seek cover, only to get an unwelcome surprise. The wall of force didn't have any sort of physical effect to block.

Rather, everything that passed through the dome abruptly went from nearly stationary to travelling toward the outside of the dome at several hundred meters per second. A few lucky ninja, who had hidden underground when they saw the attack coming, were fortunate enough to surface somewhere inside of the crater, several kilometers wide, where the army of Konoha's finest had, seconds ago, been preparing for battle.

At the edge of the crater furthest from Amegakure, Danzo stared, utterly lost, at the remains of what had been one of the mightiest forces in the world. Already his replacement sharingan, implanted after the loss of his previous one at the hands of Kushina and her traitorous friends, began to burn. Soon it would close forever. The Izanagi is a forbidden technique, even among the Uchiha, that allows the user to regard the past few seconds as a genjutsu, dismissing any effects on one's body as little more than a dream. The limits? The effects on everybody else still happen, and a sharingan that uses the Izanagi is soon blinded forever. But Danzo wasn't thinking about the loss of another eye, and his dwindling stash of stolen sharingan.

All he could do was wonder how his beloved home, the great village Konohagakure, could possibly survive this disaster. He had tried to stave off a major war by waging a minor one, to reclaim the village's greatest weapon, and in doing so he had angered a hidden superpower. What had, seconds ago, seemed like the best possible path for the village hidden in the leaves, had led to the greatest catastrophe the village had ever experienced. A catastrophe it likely would not weather.

But, he had to pull himself together; he had to stay strong for the survivors, who would be looking to him for leadership. Konoha was weak now, and every living ninja he could bring back would be an invaluable asset, and a reminder of his mistake. Somehow, the Hokage thought to himself, sparing a brief glance toward the lone figure in black walking back towards Amegakure's walls, peace now seemed a prize worth all the gold, all the power in the world. War, which Danzo had pursued all his life, as the means to keep Konoha strong and secure, was now the one thing which could not save it, unless it was a war between Konoha's foes.

Bitterly, the Fifth Hokage of Konohagakure reflected that perhaps Nagato had had a point, if only Danzo had been willing to listen.

* * *

**A.N.** **That was not an easy chapter to write. Nagato's speech at the climax of the Pain arc in the manga is one of the most powerful moments in the entire series. While the speech is being given to Danzo this time, I still really wanted to be certain I got it right. Especially since, in this AU, Nagato is supposed to be the counterpart/opposite of Danzo, rather than Naruto as in the manga. I'm still not sure I did my version of Nagato justice, but if I revised too much I'd never post this.**

** Regardless, the stage is almost set for 'Shadow of Rain'. All that's left is my short epilogue, and then it's on to the time skip, and then shippuden. Needless to say, after everything that's happened, the events of 'Shadow of Rain' are going to have little to do with the plot of canon shippuden, although some events still pretty much have to happen.**

** I know that most people interpret Nagato's Shinra Tensei (the jutsu he uses to destroy Konoha in the manga, and Danzo's army in this story) as manipulation of gravity, but gravity really doesn't work that way at all. I'm of the opinion that he's actually warping reality to change the velocity of things. It's even more powerful that way, and it makes more sense.**

** And for anyone else who is wondering, I am definitely going to bring back conspiracy theorist!random genin. I wrote him as a throwaway character to inject a little comic relief into an otherwise extremely serious chapter, but now I find myself feeling oddly fond of him. I didn't have any plans to add an OC to this story, but now one seems to have appeared. And if anyone has suggestions for wild conspiracies for him to share next time, send me a PM, and your suggestion may appear in 'Shadow of Rain'!**


	12. Looking Into the Dawn

**A.N. And so it ends. After… not all that long, actually, 'A Single Shifting Leaf' has reached its last chapter. However, this is not the end. There will be more. Like the manga, there will be shippuden. However, I will be taking a hiatus to work on other things and figure out what the plot of 'Shadow of Rain' is going to be. This story is not abandoned. I do not abandon stories until they are finished. However, I cannot begin writing until I know what to write. So, the next time this story updates, it will be to tell you that I have posted the first chapter of 'Shadow of Rain'.**

* * *

A week after Danzo had left to attack Amegakure, a most of the village's population gathered near the gates to welcome home the returning army, Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi among them. Immediately upon returning, Jiraiya had set out again to save the army, pausing only to grab some trail rations and get his leg wound partially healed by a medic-ninja at the hospital. Kakashi almost went with him, but the jonin knew he would only slow Jiraiya down. Considering when the sannin had left, he ought to be returning with the army soon, so where was he?

Even with stealthy ninja, one does not move an army of over seven thousand people without leaving signs of passage. Where was the dust cloud, the birds being disturbed? Then they saw the first flickers of movement along the road. The ninja of Konoha had returned, Jiraiya and the Hokage at their head. But, there couldn't be more than a few hundred people following them. How could things have gone so horribly wrong?

* * *

"What- What do you mean they still have Naruto?" Sasuke's whirling eyes bored accusingly into the loyal sannin, "I thought the whole point of this was to rescue him!" The sannin slumped against a nearby wall, and more than anything it was the utter helplessness in his expression that gave the Uchiha pause.

"There was nothing we could do," Jiraiya stated fatalistically, "Nagato and Danzo talked. Neither was willing to back down. And Nagato, he wouldn't give up Naruto. Danzo threatened to raze his city and murder everyone inside. Both of them were in the wrong, but Danzo thought he had the stronger position, and Nagato would have to back down. He was wrong. Nagato annihilated our entire army to force us to retreat."

"Then we have to go back! We have to rescue Naruto!" the Uchiha declared resolutely, "He- He's my… friend. I can't- I won't lose him." Just like that, Jiraiya was forcibly reminded that he was talking to someone who considered victory in single combat with Uchiha Itachi an achievable goal.

"You think I like this any more than you do?" the sannin asked, "I'm not saying we shouldn't charge in there; I'm saying it's literally, physically impossible for us to save the kid right now. Nagato blew away an entire army with one jutsu. One jutsu! And if we try to stealth in, he's got Orochimaru, the foremost expert in infiltration in the world. It just isn't possible for us to succeed, and we won't do ourselves or Naruto any favors by throwing our lives away."

"Then train me. Make me strong." The teardrops in Sasuke's eyes stilled completely, reflecting his inner focus, "I am Uchiha; I can become as strong as I need to be. I can do this!"

"I'm not gonna help you commit assisted suicide, kid," Jiraiya told him bluntly, "Even the Raikage wouldn't win against Nagato, and until a few days ago the Raikage was widely regarded as the strongest in the world by a considerable margin! And Itachi's number three, not that that's gonna stop you either, is it?"

"Hmm, if you won't teach me… I have alternatives," the loyal Uchiha mused. Jiraiya did not like the sound of that, especially the way Sasuke said 'alternatives'…

"Um, please tell me you aren't going where I think you're going with this," the sannin muttered.

"The oldest clan archives mentioned something about a forbidden blood ritual and a stronger sharingan, a Mangekyo sharingan," Sasuke plotted, "If I can get that… I need to do more research. Either way, Orochimaru already offered me power. Once I learn everything I can from him, I'll kill him and turn his sword, head, and lab notes in to Kumo. That will remove one of the people keeping me from Naruto, and probably convince the Raikage to teach me, and assuming I impregnate some of his kunoichi…"

"Gah! That's… a lot worse than what I was thinking," exclaimed the sannin, "Don't DO that. I'll teach you, honest! Just… don't. Please. Which I'm assuming is what you were planning all along, right?" Sasuke's expression didn't change at all. "For the sake of my peace of mind, I'm just gonna assume you were bluffing, OK? But if I'm gonna teach you like that, it'll take even more time and dedication than on our trip before; I'm gonna have to make you my apprentice. That means we can't stay in the village. With Konoha weakened, I'm going to need to be managing my spy network full-time to head off threats before they can get to the stabby phase. You won't see your friends or the village for three years at least…" Jiraiya trailed off, as Sasuke had already run off with a muttered sentence about scrolls and packing.

* * *

"So you're going to be off learning from Jiraiya? But three years… that's a long time," Sasuke responded to Sakura with an affirmative Uchiha Grunt. "Well, if you aren't going to give up on Naruto, then I can't either! With Tenzo-sensei and Kakashi-sensei teaching me, I'll get strong too! And before you come back I'll get strong enough to open the First Hokage's archives. I won't let the team down, I swear! We'll save Naruto. Together. And if you're okay with it, I'd like to get Hinata in on this too."

"Hinata? Really?" Sasuke wasn't opposed to this, but he was kind of surprised, "Why would she want to help?"

"May the Kami save me from socially oblivious orphans," Sakura grumbled, before deploying the slightly superior tone she assumed whenever she was imparting information to others. "Hinata's been in love with Naruto for years! If it was just a crush, it probably would've died down after seeing his personal habits. You don't spend years as a friend to a boy who showers maybe once a week unless there's something more there. And, as you have to remember, she's already pretty strong." Both genin involuntarily winced, recalling their recent encounters with the Hyuga heiress during the chunin exams.

"That would be… helpful," the Uchiha stated, shaking off the memories.

"Then it's settled," Sakura agreed, "Even if everybody else has given up, we won't. We're Team Seven, and we never leave our friends, our comrades behind. We will get stronger. And we will bring Naruto back to Konoha. No matter how difficult and dangerous it is."

"Hn. I already volunteered for one impossible task," Sasuke smiled slightly, "So what's a second one to me? Even if everyone else abandons him, Naruto will still have us, and Kakashi, and Jiraiya-sensei. Probably Hinata too. Team Seven will be reunited. Whatever it takes."

* * *

Meanwhile, in Amegakure…

"Whaaat? Those bastards were brainwashing me?!" Naruto exclaimed, "I'm never going back to Konoha again dattebayo! I don't want a clean brain! Uh, by the way, what's brainwashing? I know it's bad, but I'm kinda fuzzy on the details…

* * *

** Epilogue the Last**

In his private medical room deep within the bowls of the ANBU underground, Shimura Danzo awaited the arrival of his personal medic to implant yet another fresh sharingan. Hopefully this one would last longer than the previous ones, especially with the still-galling loss of Uchiha Shisui's irreplaceable Mangekyo eye. Kushina had no idea how much her actions had cost him! The unbelievable power of the Mangekyo's nearly undetectable genjutsu had been invaluable, and a single thrust of a kunai had taken it away from him forever…

The Hokage was shaken from his brooding (could be a side effect of implantation of Uchiha DNA… Needs testing.) as the medic arrived. The security seal on the medic's tongue resonated with the master seal on Danzo's wrist, assuring him that the newcomer was not an imposter. Silently, the medic-ninja prepared an IV of anesthetic to ready the Hokage for surgery, the bright, fluorescent lights glinting off his round spectacles and silver hair.

However, as the drugs made their way into the aging ninja's body, he was dismayed to find himself still aware, though he couldn't move a muscle below his face. "What did you do to me," he demanded, "What is the meaning of this, Kabuto? Making a mistake with the drugs? Now we'll have to wait until they wear off and start again. You're supposed to be an elite professional!"

"It wasn't a mistake," the silver-haired doctor replied, "I'm terribly sorry about this, sir. You weren't a bad boss, all things considered. But, a new order is coming. The world is changing. I aim not to be left behind. And you, sir, are in the way. Steps needed to be taken."

Beside the traitorous medic, the air began to swirl, and from the vortex stepped a tall man, wearing a cloak and mask to disguise his features. The mask provided the only color on his body; it was bright orange, with a spiral pattern surrounding its single hole for the wearer's right eye to peek through. Dispassionately, the masked man steadied Danzo's face with an iron grip, and brought his eye to meet the Hokage's remaining original orb. From behind the mask, a single crimson sharingan swirled away Danzo's world, will and awareness subsumed by the visitor's overwhelming genjutsu.

"Welcome, Lord Hokage," invited the masked man, "To the new world. Your contributions will be appreciated."

* * *

** The players have scattered now, and the stage is silent. But it will not remain so forever; even nothingness has an end. And when the lights come on, and the curtains lift, those who remained… Those who left… Those who changed… Shall come together in the Shadow of Rain.**


	13. Shadow of Rain has Begun!

**A.N. So, it turns out Zoe Walker was reading **_**A Single Shifting Leaf **_**too, and wants to know what happens next as much as the rest of you. But, she's too lazy to just look a few weeks into the future for the next chapter, so she decided to provide me with some… motivation. By siccing Baxter the dragon on me.**

** So, because it takes forever to get dragon drool out of the carpet and I am rather attached to having both my eyebrows, the first chapter of **_**Shadow of Rain: A Single Shifting Leaf Shippuden**_** has been posted much earlier than I originally planned. Enjoy.**

** Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go rent a Rug Doctor.**

**Ghostwriter-Minion**


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